


The Art of Pain

by marxeism



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Buried Alive, Capture, Death, Gore, Hurt Peter, Hurt/Comfort, I guess we'll just have to find out, Injury, Is the major character death tag for Peter?, Kidnapping, Major Injury, Medieval Torture, Original villain - Freeform, Peter Parker Pity Party, Psychological Torture, This is a hard one guys, Torture, Violence, Whump, bodies, people referred to with numbers, peter whump, slow deaths, this is not a happy one, watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-21 13:31:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11945280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marxeism/pseuds/marxeism
Summary: Peter finds himself alone and afraid, in the hands of a man obsessed with medieval torture. Death is looming on the horizon, he just wishes it would hurry up.





	1. Chapter 1

Peter doesn’t understand why he always winds up in these situations. The rest of the superheroes he knows may be captured once or twice, but Peter has been facing criminals alone since he began.

So, it might be that he’s bad at communication. He hears of situations and goes off to face them without making plans or telling others. Karen always asks if she should alert Mr. Stark before Peter enters a fight. Mr. Stark is always telling him to call if he’s dealing with more than one person. Aunt May wants him to check in every hour, or she threatens to report him as a missing person to the police.

They all think they need to protect him. Even Peter’s suit doesn’t think he should - or even can - take care of himself. So, maybe he does it to prove them wrong. Maybe he does it because otherwise he would feel like a child. He knows, he knows: technically he is a child. But he’s also an arachnid-style superhero who has willingly faced death way more often than most adults.

It’s stupid, completely idiotic really, but Peter wants to be better. He needs to be better. How can he save other people when he can’t even handle himself?

He doesn’t think to tell anybody before he enters the warehouse (because _of course_ it’s another abandoned warehouse). He’s just wearing his suit, crawling on the wall to find what he can about the place. Some people had been reporting strange and disturbing noises around the location, so that’s what Peter’s looking for.

His hair stands up on the back of his neck the moment he’s inside, but it doesn’t feel too dangerous or frightening- just a little bit creepy. Once his feet land on the floor and he looks around, it gets a lot worse.

There are bodies, two or three of them, and the Peter can’t look because-because-

Jesus, that looks like a makeshift _rack_ with a very real, non-makeshift _dead body_ stretched out more than any human should be and every joint is _wrong_ , in the wrong place and Peter thinks he’s going to be sick.

When he turns around his face is mere inches from that of a woman. He staggers back and she doesn’t move. All of her limbs are twisted in ways they shouldn’t be, poking through the spokes of a wheel. She’s hanging upside down with hollow cheeks and complete stillness and Peter is so, so glad she’s dead because he doesn’t think that pain could be bearable for anybody.

Peter pulls his mask away from his mouth and nose and he actually does throw up now, and he heaves until there’s nothing left in his stomach. He’s on his hands and knees and Karen is telling him that there are three dead human bodies and she’s listing off their injuries and Peter doesn’t want to hear.

But he has to, because he’s the first person here who’s come to help, and they deserve the respect. He needs to bare witness to their last account. When she’s finished going down the list- and it’s a long list- he nods and stands. He’s only a little bit woozy on his feet.

“Look for people who have gone missing in the past week, see if any of these faces line up,” Peter says, and he makes his way towards a shape in the corner- the body he hasn’t seen yet. He knows how the man died before he can analyze it clearly, but it doesn’t help him prepare at all.

The man’s hands and feet are tied and has a metal bucket strapped to his stomach. Peter knows this guy died of internal injuries caused by… caused by trapped rats trying to burrow their way out. When he shifts the body, hands going to untie knots, two of the rodents scurry away, leaving small, bloody pawprints on the floor. Peter removes the bucket, and there’s a third one, sleeping. In a cavernous hole that it ate out of a living man’s chest. There are rat droppings and torn intestines easily visible, and Peter tries not to choke.

“I have found no matches in New York’s missing person database,” Karen interrupts softly. Peter’s eyes drift to the man’s face, and it’s twisted and wretched and horrible. It takes all he has not to cry.

“Widen the search,” He says, and his voice sounds distant, even to him “Send the coordinates to Mr. Stark, but tell him it’s not an emergency. Karen, I-I’m going to go now. I’ll check in soon, don’t worry,” Peter takes off the mask.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to Karen, he could actually really use the company. And it’s not that he’s afraid of vomiting again either, although he is. Peter takes the mask off because executioners wear masks, and he doesn’t want to be that, doesn’t want to do that.

So he leaves the mask on the ground while he gets the last rodent out of the man’s stomach. Peter tries to rearrange the body - to make the man look more peaceful - but it’s cold and stiff and no matter how he tries, he can’t find a way to cover the wide, gaping hole. He layers a web over the man’s chest, like a bandage, and he lays the guy’s hands across his stomach, like they always position a corpse in a coffin.

He makes sure the man’s eyes are closed before he moves onto the woman. She’s a lot more difficult. He has to climb onto the large wooden wheel to untie her shattered limbs, and, when he tries to grab her, the flesh seems to melt off in his hand. She’s decomposing. She’s been here for a while. Peter can’t find a way for her to look at rest- her arms and legs are broken in so many ways, in so many places.

He continues on to the rack. He had learned about it during a medieval unit of Junior High. It shouldn’t exist any more, there shouldn’t be a man stretched out and broken on one. Each and every joint, with the exception of his fingers and toes, have been dislocated. Peter tries the knot, but it’s too tight, it’s been pulled too much. Instead, he has to go to the lever, struggling to imagine how somebody could hurt another human being so badly, while he tries to bring the wooden structure back together.

Peter unties the knots. They’re still difficult, but he manages to release the man’s hands and feet. He lays there, unmoving, and Peter realizes that this one is different. This one is still warm.

Or not ‘ _warm_ ’ so to speak, but definitely not as cold as the other two. It hits Peter like a bullet that this man probably only died a few hours ago. He feels like he’s choking again, and now Peter just wants out. He’s scrambling to the first body to get a mask, and he doesn’t hear the sound of a door closing behind him.

He’s kneeling there, holding his mask in his hands, when he begins retching again. He’s dry-heaving, and crying but it doesn’t stop. Not until there’s a sharp crack filling the air and pain in the back of his head and everything goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess- warnings for cursing, mentions of death and kidnapping. 
> 
> We're just getting set up for the moment, but I promise you all that the shit's going to hit the fan any moment now.

There’s a pounding in Peter’s head when he comes back to reality. It’s there and insistent but it can’t block out the discomfort of lying on his stomach with his arms behind his back. 

He groans softly, wondering why in the world he had gone to sleep in such an awful position. He doesn’t remember going to sleep- he must have been wiped. Is it a school day? 

Shit, he slept in. He’s going to be late, and May is going to be so mad and Mr. Stark will insist on checking in to make sure Peter has his priorities straight, because  _ your education comes first  _ or whatever. 

Peter’s eyes snap open and he goes to push himself from the mattress. There are only a couple of problems:

His eyes open to nothing but darkness, no morning sun or city lights filtering through his bedroom window. His mattress is not a mattress- but rather a cold and slightly damp cement floor. And, when he tries to pull his arms away from his back, he chokes. 

Then it comes back to him;  _ three dead, eaten by rats, twisted and decomposing, still warm to the touch.  _

This is way worse than sleeping in. Attempting to remain calm, he tests his hands again, finding the wrists encased in metal cuffs. He rubs one hand across the opposite restraint, and they go at least two or three inches up his forearms. 

There’s a chain attaching his wrists, with what feels like a metal pole secured to the middle, traveling up his back. He thinks it’s connected to the heavy leather wrapped around his neck like a collar. Peter’s strong, he could probably break the chain connecting his hands with a little bit of effort. But, with the collar there, he would risk strangling himself or breaking his own neck in the process. 

Peter doesn’t need his spider senses to confirm that this is  _ badbadbadbadbad  _ and he needs to  _ get out of here before he winds up like them.  _ Like the pale, limp victims he remembers releasing from the restraints back in the warehouse. 

It’s not a comfortable process rolling around to try and get himself into a sitting position. There is, after all, a cold metal rod stabbing into his back whenever he moves. It takes a few minutes, but Peter finds himself kneeling on the floor and surveying his surroundings. 

He doesn’t find any more than he did when he first woke up. The entire place is pitch black and cold and damp, like it’s underground. It’s probably a cellar or a basement. If the situation weren’t so serious, Peter might have laughed at the cliche of being chained up in someone’s basement. 

“Hello?” He calls. He doesn’t expect anybody to answer, but the echo could help him discern the size of the room… If he knew how. When the echo comes back to him, he honestly has no idea how to analyze it. He thinks it’s big, since all the sounds he makes seem slightly muted. Though that may just be an effect of the concussion he’s pretty sure he has.

He’s got to figure out the layout of the room, to see if there’s any way for him to escape. Who knows- maybe there’s even a door, leading right out this place and back to his apartment in Queens. Maybe Mr. Stark is waiting for him. Maybe it’s some kind of a test. 

Probably not. 

He’s still got to get out. 

Peter is standing, and it’s probably a good thing that he can’t see anything, because the dizziness is already almost overpowering. He stumbles forward, immediately regretting the decision when he slams face-first into a stone wall. It stings, but he knows that he’s in for a lot worse if he doesn’t escape soon. 

He turns around and lays his hands against the smooth, cold wall - definitely not a basement then, or a very old one. He follows the wall to his left for what he figures is a good hundred feet before he gets to a corner. That’s only part of the first wall, so the rest of the room, Peter assumes, is fairly large. 

However, there are no suggestions of shelves or parking stops to offer Peter clues. He continues onto the next wall, hoping to find something useful, and promptly trips. 

There’s something on the floor, he has no doubt. It’s too large and soft to be a block. Peter frowns. He’s pretty sure he’s just been attacked and kidnapped, and the thought of his potential torturer providing him with something soft for comfort really doesn’t add up. 

He’s sitting on his butt when he manages to find the thing again. He nudges it with his foot and is definitely not expecting it to groan.

Peter jumps back, and needs to remind himself how to breath properly. He’s in the dark, he has no use of his hands, and there’s something  _ alive _ down here. He’s hyperventilating. He knows that he’s hyperventilating. And it only gets worse when the thing  _ speaks. _

“Stop doing that,” The voice is low and masculine, rough like it hasn’t been used for a while. It doesn’t sounds threatening, but Peter’s on edge and any of this could be part of some master plan that he doesn’t understand the goal of.

“Who are you!?” Peter asks, and it’s meant to sounds threatening and commanding, but his voice is just shaking too much. It squeaks and he just sounds so young and it’s humiliating. But he has to ask, “Where am I? What’s going on?” 

The humourless chuckle he gets as a response is not calming. Not one little bit. The actual verbal answer, even less so. 

“Blunt answer is you’re in hell. You’re going to be until you die a really fucking awful death, so you’re just going to have to get used to it and pray you go fast. Try not to think about your wife or your friends, just makes it harder,” The man isn’t speaking tough or trying to be intimidating, his voice just sounds… empty. 

“N-No,” Peter says, and it sounds unsure and pathetic. He tries again, “No,” Better. “I’m not going to die. Neither are you. I’ll find us a way out and-” 

He’s laughing. The man is laughing. It’s maniacal and terrifying and Peter wonders if this is the person who’s going to kill him for a second. 

“Keep dreaming, kid,” He says, after the spurt of totally inappropriate laughter.

Peter goes silent. Because he knows he can get them out. He just needs time and a strategy and he’s a superhero for God’s sake. He’s Spider-Man. The hardest part is going to be convincing the other man to believe in him.

They’re silent long enough for Peter to shift himself so that his back is supported by the wall, and not just his shackled hands. 

“What’s your name?” Peter asks, after a while in the darkness. His eyes aren’t adjusting and, distantly, he wonders if maybe he’s just gone blind. 

“We don’t do that,” The man answers, and Peter feels his face pulling into a frown, “A lot of us watch each other die, and making it personal sucks. I’m Number Two. After One dies, I’ll take her place and you’ll call me Number One. You’re Five. We call the bastard the Fucker.”

“My name is Peter,” He says quietly, because he’s not ready to become a number yet. He’s not ready to be part of some sick countdown. Two doesn’t answer for a while. 

“I didn’t want to know that,” Is all he says, and for the first time Peter hears more. He hears something akin to despair in Two’s voice and it’s becoming hard not to fall victim to the hopelessness as well. 

“Well you know now…” And Peter only feels a little guilty about hurting Two more, “And I’m going to get us out of here, I promise. Next time the Fu- the Eff-er comes-”

Two cuts him off again, “Jesus, kid, how old are you?” Oh. Peter realizes he probably should have called the guy by the name Two gave him, but he just feels… weird cursing in front of adults.

“I’m fifteen,” Peter says. He’s tempted to lie, but that’s not going to do anything. Two pulls in a deep breath. 

“Fuck,” Two mutters, and then his voice goes cold again, “Get away from me, Five. I don’t want to talk to you,”

“Peter,” He corrects, “My name is-”

“I don’t care what the fuck your name is,” Two hisses, and Peter knows that it’s not his fault, the guy must be so afraid. It still hurts. “Leave me alone,” 

And Peter complies as much as he can. He struggles to his feet and backs up until he finds another, empty corner. He’s still close to Two, he knows, but it’s as good as they’re going to get right now. 

Peter cries. He cries. And if Two can hear his broken sobs and uneven breath, he says nothing. He offers no comfort or kind words. 

For the first time in his life, Peter knows that he’s perfectly, completely alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are going to be a few original characters and a few minor characters i refer to, because there are other people going through shit too. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are lovely, and, if you feel like it, I'd love to talk to you! Any of you, really! Even if you just want to come by and yell at me. Friends are good :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for death, blood, gore, torture, etc. This is where the psychological and physical torture both really start happening, 
> 
> I feel a little bit awful for torturing a fifteen year old, but... you know, never mind, there's no way to justify the things I've been doing to poor Peter. This is just the beginning of the pain he's going to have to endure.
> 
> I'm really happy about the response this has gotten so far, and I'm going to try to continue updating every day. School starts on Tuesday, though, so I don't know how that's going to affect my schedule yet.

 

Peter wakes to the unmistakeable buzzing of fluorescent ceiling lights. It would almost remind him of school, if not for the uncomfortable position, the throbbing pain in his head, and the complete and utter terror he feels when he realizes that  _ something _ is turning on the lights, which means that  _ something _ is coming. 

And, whatever that  _ something _ is, there’s no way it’s good. Peter doesn’t need his spider senses to figure that out. 

However, nothing is happening right now, and Peter needs to take that chance and use it for what it is. He needs to get acquainted with his surroundings, he needs to assess the state of his fellow prisoners, and he needs to find a way to get them all out. 

The room is definitely an old parking garage, there are lines marking the spots on the ground and a multitude of columns and shafts. It can’t be in the city, or it wouldn’t exist. An area like this would be claimed before it was abandoned in the first place. That’s one piece of information he’ll, hopefully, be able to use. 

Out of the four prisoners he can see, Peter, surprisingly, seems to have the most comfortable restraints. There’s a woman hanging off of the wall by her wrists. She’s only five or six inches from the ground, but her toes can’t touch and Peter can’t imagine the strain it puts on her arms. Her eyes are open and tired, and he can see each individual rib underneath the skin on his stomach. 

The man he had talked to earlier, Two, is  _ hogtied.  _ He’s on his side with his arms pulled uncomfortably behind his body and his knees bent. His spine is curving backwards in a way that can’t possibly be natural and his face is pointed straight forwards, staring at nothing. The man, tied like an animal, looks as vacant as his voice had suggested. 

In the middle of the room, there’s a chair. For a moment, it looks almost normal. It’s wooden and the woman sitting on it is only secured by her ankles and wrists. It looks like it may even be better than Peter’s restraints. And then he sees the small puddle of blood gathering underneath the seat and he sees what looks like  _ metal spikes _ digging into her bare skin and he has to look away because he feels like he’s going to be sick again. 

The last person, another man, reminds Peter from a scene in  _ The Incredibles _ . He’s fixed in a standing position, spread eagle. Peter can see the quick rise and fall of his chest, but that’s the only sign that the man is awake. His bare feet are fixated to the wall behind him, and his hands are completely encased in metal spheres. It looks constricting and painful, the devices stretching his arms into the air. The man’s head is encased in a similar looking globe. Even the thought of being trapped in something like that makes Peter feel incredibly claustrophobic. 

They’re all naked, except for their underthings. Peter’s not. His mask is missing, but the rest of his suit is still tight on his body. He has to hope that the tracker is still attached and sending out a signal, because otherwise, Peter’s worried that Mr. Stark may never find him.

When the woman walks in from a very plain, very obvious door, it’s not at all what Peter’s expecting. She doesn’t look afraid, not like he is, but she’s shaking and she’s nervous. In her arms, there are a multitude of large, black boxes. She walks around the room, setting a camera in front of each individual. They’re all positioned perfectly so that the prisoner’s entire body can be seen. 

She exits, only to come back in with some sort of large wooden frame. It’s placed, standing up, a few feet from the hanging woman. The woman is crying now, Peter notices. Something in his stomach drops as he realizes she must be Number One. He’s about to watch her die. 

There’s a few seconds of silence before the door slams open again. This time, it’s a man, and he’s not at all what Peter expects either. 

He has short hair and glasses, and an entirely scholarly look about him. He’s wearing a suit and tie, with a rain poncho over top. It’s a bizarre appearance, but nobody else seems to bat an eye. The man drops more boxes into the girl’s hands and turns to Peter. He has a knife. 

_ Oh God  _ so much for the countdown, Peter’s pretty sure he’s going to be stabbed to death right now. The man’s approaching fast, and the smooth blade is reflecting the dim garage lighting and Peter doesn’t want to die. He isn’t ready to die. There’s so much more he needs to do. 

“P-Please! Please don’t!” He hears himself begging before he even registers that he’s speaking. He’s completely helpless, he can’t move and they’re just going to kill him right here. It’s not fair. It just isn’t. He’s crying again, and part of him doesn’t care about the humiliation, because it’s not like he’s going to be alive to feel it much longer. 

The man is walking to his prey like it’s the most natural and normal thing in the world. He squats, just feet away from Peter’s shaking body, and the boy’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Calm down,” The man laughs, like Peter’s terror is unreasonable and  _ funny,  _ and Peter’s not hyperventilating in fear. He doesn’t want to die. Doesn’t want to leave May alone. Doesn’t want to leave Mr. Stark without a word of appreciation. Peter is fifteen years old and he’s not ready to die, but it’s looking more and more like his wishes mean nothing. 

“I’m not killing you! What the hell is it with you people always thinking I’m here to kill you?” Peter’s shaking and he wants to say that it’s probably because the guy has kidnapped them and restrained them, and  _ there are blood stains on the walls _ , but he can’t get a word out of his mouth, he’s frozen. “I’m just taking off your suit, I can’t have you pulling any tricks on me. The more you move, the more it’s going to hurt,” 

Peter’s still shaking, and he doesn’t completely believe that the man  _ doesn’t  _ intend to harm him. The knife approaches his collar, and his breath stops. He can feel the point. Just barely, but it’s there and it’s terrifying and it’s moving down Peter’s shoulder to his arm. When he chances a glance, there’s just a knife, slitting a thin line down his suit with scarily surgical precision. 

The breath he’s been holding leaves him, and just like that, Peter’s shaking again. He knows it’s his own fault, but he can feel exactly where the knife pricks him and he can feel the warm blood contrasting against the cold metal and he just wants it to be over. 

The suit’s off his shoulders. Peter can feel five pairs of eyes on him while the man begins peeling the suit back. He’s cutting through above Peter’s stomach now, and removing Peter’s clothing, and it’s  _ awful.  _

He’s crying, and people are watching him, and it’s humiliating, and he’s going to die. He’s going to die and his last days are going to be spent half-naked in a room full of strangers. 

The knife goes over his hips, and Peter doesn’t mean to, really. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction. He bucks under the man’s hand and the knife slices his upper thigh. 

Everything is silent for a moment, they’re both shocked. Then the man growls and brings the knife down, hard. It slices right through Peter’s suit into his other leg and it  _ hurts _ and his throat is raw from screaming. 

The man doesn’t care. He keeps pulling off the suit while Peter sobs and cries, but nobody’s going to hear. Nobody that can help. 

Peter’s skin is cold against the ground. He wants to curl into a ball and disappear, but he can’t because the metal pole just stabs him in the back again. Vaguely, he registers the man waving the ruined suit over his victims face before moving on. 

He needs to be somewhere else, anywhere else. So he closes his eyes and bites his lip and imagines he can transport himself home. Tries to create the picture in his mind, because maybe-

_ He’s in his bedroom, reading comics with Ned. Their schoolwork is out and strewn all over the place, but it’s not what they want to focus on right now. Aunt May calls them in for dinner, and it’s chinese takeout. They have dumplings and noodles and… and…  _

And there’s the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming. He wishes he could stay in a fantasy land, but there’s somebody in pain, and he needs to help her. He needs to find a way. So he opens his eyes and tries to find her in this dungy garage and-  _ oh.  _

The woman- the one that had been hanging from the wall by her wrists, is now hanging upside down by her ankles. Her feet, fastened to the great wooden frame by rope, are shoulder width apart. She’s so skinny. Peter wants to look away, wants to conserve her modesty, but the man is behind her, holding a saw.

_ God, no _ Peter prays. He hasn’t tried since he was a young child with living parents, but he prays now,  _ Don’t let this happen. Please, please, don’t.  _

His prayers go, unsurprisingly, unanswered. 

The man passes the saw between the woman’s legs to his assistant. Together, they start downwards. Desperately, Peter looks for help. Everybody is watching, they’ve even taken the globe off of that poor man’s head, but nobody is saying anything. Nobody is doing anything. 

The screams intensify as the saw cuts through her first layers of skin, and her blood is already dripping to the ground. 

“Please!” Peter hears himself begging, and it feels even more intense than it did when he was begging for his own life, “Don’t hurt her! Don’t! She hasn’t- She didn’t  _ do  _ anything! Why are you doing this? Stop! Oh God, you’re going to kill her!” 

There’s not even a moment of hesitation. They continue the downwards motion so slowly. They’re probably half of a foot into the woman already, and she’s still sobbing and struggling but she’s not dead yet. 

She should have died of blood loss already. There’s so much blood. Vaguely, Peter realizes that she’s hanging upside down to keep the blood in her head and to keep her awake. The entire process is designed to be as slow and painful as possible. 

They’ve gotten to her hips, and the woman has stopped struggling. She’s just dangling there, eyes glassy and tears falling into her brittle hair. 

She’s not dead yet, and Peter wonders if maybe, just maybe, he can still save her. If there’s anything he  _ can  _ do to end her pain, he has to try. So, he stands, does his very best to ignore the sharp hurt in his own legs, leans his torso forward, and he runs until his head has collided with the man’s stomach.

The man falls, because yeah, Peter is strong, even without the use of his arms. But it makes him clumsy, and there’s little he can do when the guy catches his chains and pulls  _ hard.  _

Suddenly, he can’t breath. There’s so much pressure on his neck and his attempts to inhale just remind him how  _ empty _ his lungs suddenly are. He’s choking but at least, at least he’s not being sawed in half like the poor woman in front of him. 

But he can’t breath and his face is hot but the rest of him is cold. The man isn’t letting go until Peter’s vision begins fading. The last thing he sees before everything goes dark and the pressure on his neck is relieved, is a woman’s still, dead face. 

He supposes that he’s Number Four now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so grateful for all the comments and kind words. 
> 
> Just some notes:  
> When Peter imagines himself at home, it's called disassociation. This is a response to external stress or trauma, usually developed by young children. It's something that often gets better with age, but for a lot of us it never quite goes away. Peter's been through a shitload of trauma too, beginning with the death of his parents. 
> 
> The tortures and restraints featured in this fic, are, for the most part, based on real historical medieval torture instruments or techniques. 
> 
> If you want to talk to me, you know i love comments and messages. I also don't have a beta for this story yet, if anybody is interested in first peaks and plot conversation.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, my friends, is where shit gets real. 
> 
> For those of you waiting for the real torture, here it comes. 
> 
> It hurts, guys. It hurts.

 

Peter’s not unconscious, not fully. His head is fuzzy and clouded in darkness. He’s gasping for the air he had been denied, but he can still feel his body being moved and placed. 

They’re messing with his shackles, separating the handcuffs from the collar. There’s no pole limiting his motions anymore, and, although he can’t move much at the moment anyways, it’s a relief. His hands must be unchained for at least a moment, because they’re in front of him now, instead of behind. 

They’re being lifted above his head, and Peter’s vision is becoming clear again. 

“Wha…?” He tries to ask, but his head is swimming and they’ve already let go of him. The only difference, for a few seconds, is that his hands are secured above his head now. That is- until the chains begin pulling his entire body up. 

His sight’s still blurry, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s being lifted off of the ground. Peter’s kicking and struggling, but every moment gives him less control of his own body. There’s nobody he can actually hit, his captors are far enough away, on the other side of the rattling chain. 

Soon, his feet can’t touch the ground anymore, and suddenly everything becomes clear and sharp. He can’t see the guy pulling on the chain, but he can look up and see the pulley system they have. He assumes the chain is being secured to something, because he drops about half of an inch before his height stabilizes. 

He’s swinging with every movement. His shoulders are already beginning to hurt from the strain, and his lungs are too small to pull a decent breath. He looks around and everybody seems to be watching him. Some with detached curiosity, some with pity. Two looks oddly scared, and the woman Peter supposes they called One…

Well she’s hanging from her ankles in two separate pieces. There’s nothing in her eyes and it scares Peter even more when he realizes he’s hanging in the same place she was, when she was alive. Maybe they’re going to put him upside down and saw him in half too. 

Or not. The guy -Peter doesn’t really want to call him ‘The Fucker’, but maybe the Professor will work with his scholarly appearance- isn’t holding the saw anymore. He’s holding a different contraption in his hands now, two wooden blocks attached to each other with large metal screws. Inside, Peter can see what looks like the sharp ends of nails. No way can that be good. 

No way Peter’s going to let the Professor come near him with that  _ thing.  _ He has no idea where it’s supposed to go or what it’s supposed to do, but it looks painful as hell. He’s already been choked, clobbered, scratched, cut, and stabbed. Sure, the bleeding has stopped and the scratches are already healing, but Peter’s pretty sure he’s been through enough. 

He’s a fifteen year old vigilante superhero, he’s definitely dealt with enough. He doesn’t need any more. 

So, he tries to breathe and swings until he’s facing the Professor and his sidekick again. He glares at them. They both know that the moment Peter gets his footing, he can take them out with ease. He’s stronger, and faster, and smarter, and they know he can outmatch them in any sense. 

If he only had his feet, he could rip his hands from the chain so easily. As it is, his attempts only have him swinging in larger arcs and becoming increasingly disoriented. A couple of the video cameras have been moved, and they’re around Peter, lights blinking as they record. 

The Professor is speaking to a camera, tightening and releasing the device as he explains it. Peter wonders where he’s keeping the videos, why he’s keeping them. It’s not some sort of snuff film, he doesn’t think. If the Professor were distributing copies, there’s no way he wouldn’t have been caught by now. 

It can’t be for money and he thinks any laughter and glee while he executed the woman would have been obvious. It’s probably not for pleasure then. What in the world can this man be gaining from blatant torture and murder of innocent people? 

Maybe, maybe this is some sort of sick experiment. Peter’s heard of human experimentation before. The Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, had been experimented on. Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff, hell even Bruce Banner are outcomes of experiments. 

The thing is, they all knew. They knew what they were getting themselves into before they started. Or, they knew as soon as it had begun. The Professor is presenting a verbal log to the camera, but for all Peter tries, he can’t figure out the question, the hypothesis, the background. From what he’s seen so far, every person here is in a slightly different situation. They’re all different ages, different ethnicities, different genders. There’s no control, and that would void the experiment immediately. 

The man’s obviously sick, but he must still have a motive. Everyone has a motive, everything has a motive. If Peter could only understand it…

“Knee Splitter,” The man enunciates to the camera. His back is to Peter, so he can’t see the device anymore. It doesn’t sound good. “The knee splitter was often used during the Spanish Inquisition to permanently cripple prisoners. It was constructed of two wooden blocks, two large screws, and a multitude of iron spikes. The device is placed around the prisoners limb and tightened. Variations included heating the metal spikes beforehand or blunting the spikes to cause more pain by making the process slower.”

Peter can see the thing now, and it does not look good. Hell, it looks really, really bad. It sounds even worse. His eyes are wide and tearing, and it feels like he can’t get enough air to his lungs no matter how hard he tries. 

This isn’t going to kill him, Peter realizes. It could get infected, or put him into shock, but his immune system has been nearly invincible since the spider bite incident. He’s not going to be lucky enough for fevered hallucinations or a septic death, it’s just going to really, really hurt. 

The Professor has turned around, and he’s approaching. Peter isn’t having it. Maybe he doesn’t have a choice, maybe he can’t stop any of this, but he can at least try. He still has hope, and he isn’t going to give up. Maybe his fighting will actually inspire others to do the same. They’re weak and hurting, but there are four of them and only two enemies. If Peter could just find a way to bring them together, they could revolt. They could win.

Now’s not the time for that. Now is the time for making sure that damn device gets nowhere near his legs. He needs those things to get around, and he’s not just going to let some crazy sadist take them from him. 

But the guy’s approaching, and Peter has no choice but to kick. He’s swinging every which way, and his arms feel like they could fall off, but he’s moving, and that’s going to make it hard for the Professor to get him in any kind of hold. 

He thinks of all the people he’s saved, because yeah, Peter has saved some lives. But he can’t be Spider-Man without all of his appendages. He kicks the Professor square in the chest. Hard.

It feels oddly satisfying, watching the man stumble back until he hits a wall. Sure, Peter fights, but he gains no satisfaction from the act of hurting others. In fact, he often tries to avoid causing injury. This is different. This is for Two and the woman hanging upside down in pieces. This is for the prisoners watching from the room around him. This is for the three bodies in the warehouse. This is for Peter. And hell, does it feel good. 

The Professor is mere feet away from Two. He has one hand on the wall and the other on his chest. He’s catching his breath, but he doesn’t really  _ look _ upset. In fact, Peter thinks he looks a little bit… Amused? Intrigued?

“Caucasian male,” The Professor says into Two’s camera, “Unknown age, unknown name. Spider-Man,” the man recites and Peter thinks he hears the girl filming gasp. “Genetically modified to withstand multiple situations and possessing superhuman strength.”

The Professor turns back towards Peter, looks him straight in the eye and says, “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a child. Never had a modified person. Most of these people, I don’t like to seriously physically torture until their execution. The theory is, your heart won’t give out nearly as easily, and infection is less likely to catch. You, I can have fun with.”

Peter’s gawking, he knows. But he can’t bring himself to move. His heart is thrumming in his ears, and  _ there had been a child here _ . This man had remorselessly tortured and killed a child. He can’t seem to get that through his mind, and the Professor is smirking at him like he knows. Peter can’t help but imagine himself as a little boy again, hanging and sobbing and dying. 

He doesn’t notice that the assistant is behind him until a new shackle snaps over his left ankle. He tries pulling it away, but it’s too late. The thing won’t offer him more than an inch of movement and the terror is growing in his throat. He hadn’t been paying attention. The Professor had been baiting him, and he had taken it, and he had frozen. 

He only has one leg left to fight with, but he refuses to go down easily. He kicks wildly with his right foot, while checking the restraint on his left. It’s hooked to a loop in the wall. If Peter tries, if he’s fast, he thinks he might be able to pull his chain from it’s base. 

It’s too late before he even thinks of the idea. When he’s not watching, they snap an identical metal cuff around his right ankle. This one hurts. They miss and it pinches the skin on the back of his foot. Peter can feel it ripping and he can feel blood, but it’s nothing compared to the absolute horror he knows is awaiting him. 

They’re unscrewing the knee splitter. It’s a painfully long process, but Peter can’t tear his eyes from the slowly twirling corkscrew. It means he still has time. A little bit of time. He’s still working on his left leg, and he thinks he hears the metal twisting and giving out just a little bit before there are people on either side, screwing the thing back together. 

There are sharp points resting precariously on either side of his knee and he knows he’s lost his chance. He’d been given one last opportunity, and he flunked it. 

The Professor is standing there, over his left leg, holding the screw that is soon to crush Peter’s joint. With his eyes squeezed shut, he thinks of Aunt May. He thinks of Ned and MJ and Mr. Stark. 

He imagines Aunt May, holding his hand like she would when he was little. Before he got a shot at the doctor’s office. He imagines himself being held, being comforted. 

“I was so proud I caught a spider,” The Professor says, “It’s too bad I have to break his legs.” Peter’s throat closes around his next exhalation. 

Then it begins. 

It’s like nothing Peter has ever experienced. It’s mind numbing, and sharp, and demolishing all at the same time. A part of him wishes it were death. 

It’s like he’s being mauled by a wolf, or he’s caught in a bear trap. It’s pure pain and it’s only getting worse. Peter can’t think, he can’t see, he can’t hear anything except for his own anguished screams. 

It’s so bad. It’s more pain than Peter could have imagined humanly possible. He’s thrashing as metal teeth  _ tear into his flesh _ . It’s overwhelming and his voice is breaking and he’s pretty sure that this man, this awful man is ripping his calf off by hand. He can feel his own ligaments popping and tearing inside of his leg. 

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. Minutes, hours, days, before he can finally feel the  _ thing  _ retracting. It’s blinding, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did going in. 

He doesn’t know when he loses consciousness, but when he wakes, they’re already starting on the right knee. 

Peter thinks that maybe, it won’t be as bad now that he’s been through it once already. Maybe he’s grown accustomed to the pain and, while he knows it will hurt, he wonders if, just maybe, it won’t hurt as much. 

He’s wrong. 

It hurts and it hurts and it hurts. The pain doesn’t stop coming. He understand what Two had meant now, when the man said Peter should pray for a quick death. This is not quick. This is not death. There’s so much pure, utter pain and Peter’s going to have to live with it for the rest of his short life. 

He’s going to live in crippled agony until he’s not living anymore. 

He prays that May and Mr. Stark never have the misfortune of discovering his body. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The things i do to Peter are so not okay. He's just a kid guys... He's just a kid. 
> 
> I'm slightly ahead of schedule in my writing, so I'm really hoping that daily updates will continue once school begins. 
> 
> The knee splitter is a real torture device used in the middle ages. It's said to be extremely painful, but it wasn't meant to kill. Sometimes it did, because of infection and medieval medicine and all that. 
> 
> We know that Peter heals at an accelerated rate, so the wounds will close soon. However, it's crazy unlikely that the ligaments will reattach and the injuries will set correctly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's about time Peter gets some comfort and maybe even a little bit of hope. His general optimism is so important to his character. Peter's an idealist, and he believes in the best outcome, and he's pure. He doesn't deserve any of the shit i dish out to him. I love my spider son so much.

 

He knows that the lights turn off at some point. He knows that they drop him to the ground and pour hydrogen peroxide over his mutilated legs. He knows that it’s cold and he knows that he should be dehydrated from bleeding and crying. 

He doesn’t know how long he lays there completely alone. He doesn’t know if he sleeps. He doesn’t know if anybody is searching for him. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be kept alive. He doesn’t know how long his sanity will last. 

The Professor leaves him in only a pair of handcuffs. It’s as if he knows Peter won’t try to escape. As if he knows that Peter is already broken. Honestly, Peter isn’t sure he’s wrong. His legs are broken, and they’re never going to be repaired. He’s had broken bones before, but he’s had Aunt May to hold his hand too. 

He wishes that he could be with Ned and MJ. He could sit in chemistry like everything is perfectly normal, like his knees haven’t been torn to shreds by some medieval torture device. Honestly, he wouldn’t mind Flash mocking him in front of the entire school if it meant he weren’t here. 

But he is here. The only people he’s even heard make sound are either dead, evil, or they refuse to see him as human. He is here and he’s beginning to doubt that he’ll ever be anywhere else. 

He wonders why he’s never heard any of the other prisoners speak. The only reason Two had spoken a word was because he had been kicking the poor guy. The others- Peter can hear them breathing when his sobs quiet down, but that’s about it. 

He’s still sniffling, because of course he is, when he hears something scuffling against the ground, coming his way. It could be some sort of rodent. He doesn’t expect a voice inches away from his ear. 

“Hey.” Two says, and Peter jumps. His body jolts and his knees hit the concrete. It’s not forceful, but every movement hurts, and Peter can’t stop himself from yelping. 

“H-Hi,” He replies. He wonders how Two got here, how long it must have taken to move himself, inch by inch to Peter’s location. 

“How you holding up, Four?” The concern in Two’s tone isn’t imagined. The man really does want to know. Peter doesn’t understand the sudden shift from their last conversation. 

“My name is Peter,” He says, instead of answering the question. They both know he’s doing poorly. They had both been there when the Professor had slowly and painfully crippled him. 

Two draws in a sharp breath, and Peter is so sure he’s going to leave again. He’s going to leave Peter all alone, and he’s going to die, and they’re all going to die. The prospect isn’t new, but it’s still terrifying, nauseating.

“Aaron,” Is what Two says, and Peter isn’t sure he understands, “That’s my name. Aaron Alexander.”

“Oh.”  _ We don’t do that here.  _ He wonders what changed. “Well, umm… It’s- It’s nice to meet you… Mr. Alexander.”

Two-Mr. Alexander laughs, “Don’t call me that, kid,” And Peter thinks that maybe the man wants to be called by his first name, “Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you too, Peter.”

Suddenly, the pain isn’t as bad. His knees are still in mind shattering agony. His shoulders might as well be dislocated. He’s pretty sure he still has a mild concussion and his heart is definitely still beating faster than it should be. But that’s not the only thing there is anymore. 

Now, suddenly, Peter has somebody. It’s not ideal. It’s not May, or Ned, or MJ, or Mr. Stark, but it is Aaron Alexander and that’s something. It’s dark, so Peter knows that Aaron won’t see him smile, but he does it anyways. It seems that there’s so little to look forward to in the foreseeable future, at least he has a friend now. 

A friend for the end of the world. Isn’t that the name of a movie? He isn’t sure, he’s never seen it. 

“I’ve never seen the Fucker do that before,” Aaron says. Peter has stopped attempting to measure the passage of time. He thinks it’s a few seconds before the man speaks again, “He starves us, he leaves us to rot, he narrates our deaths. He never- He doesn’t torture  _ just  _ to torture.”

“I guess I’m just special then,” Peter quips back. He tries to laugh, but nothing about the situation seems truly funny. Aaron doesn’t seem to find humour in Peter’s words, but that’s okay. 

“I have a seventeen year old daughter,” Aaron admits and oh.  _ Oh.  _ He thinks he understands now. The man has a child hardly older than Peter himself. It’s no surprise that the fifteen year old boy would make him think of her. 

“What’s her name?” Peter asks, because she’s something safe and good for Aaron to focus on, and he needs that right now. 

“If you ever get out of this place, you go find her. Find her mother. Tell ‘em both that I’m sorry. Tell ‘em I died easy, no pain at all.”

Peter wants to reach out to the darkness, to find Aaron and reassure him that he  _ won’t  _ die. That they’ll get out together, and that he won’t have to tell Aaron’s family anything at all. The thing is, Peter doesn’t know he will get out. And if he does, what he could do next. He’d established that he’s not in a city, but he can’t walk. If he gets out of the garage, who’s going to see him? He would escape only to die of exposure. 

The lights start buzzing on again. 

Aaron is next in line. The Professor is coming either to kill the first friend Peter’s made in this place, or he’s coming to hurt Peter. 

It doesn’t make him proud that he hopes it’s the former. The man walks in alone and he sets up the cameras by himself. 

His assistant walks in then. She sets down what looks like a giant stake. There’s a cross structure underneath, keeping the instrument standing tall and alert. It must be at least four feet of pointy wooden terror. 

The Professor is walking towards him. And Peter can tell through the confident lift of his chin and the bounce in his walk that he knows exactly what he’s about to do. 

Peter’s lying with his stomach on the ground, and he tries using his elbows to move his body forward, but it’s not working. He gets a few inches, but the Professor is right on his heals and Peter closes his eyes and tries to mentally prepare himself for whatever is about to happen.

Nobody touches him. 

When he opens his eyes, and turns to look behind him, they’ve taken Aaron. They’ve taken the man, and they’re releasing him from the restraints. Peter can’t imagine how badly his muscles must cramp, but the man looks more relieved. Until he’s picked up again. 

Aaron doesn’t look empty anymore, his eyes bore into Peter’s and he looks afraid and in pain and maybe even a little lost. When they try to lift him, his shackled fists make their way to the Professor’s face.

He’s a small guy, Peter realizes. He may be even shorter than the arachnid superhero. He’s skinny and obviously weak, but he’s fighting tooth and nail. His tormentors drop him when he kicks the Professor below the belt.

Peter’s pulling himself across the room. Aaron has something to live for, and Peter doesn’t want to be the one to tell his family about his death. So he’s going to fight too. It’s hard and every tiny movement sends a fresh wave of pain through his legs, but it’s more important than anything he’s done before. 

The Professor’s on the ground, red mark on his face that Peter is sure will develop into a nasty black eye. Aaron is scrappy, and Peter can respect that. He’s scrappy too. 

It was probably a mistake on his captor’s part to leave him in simple, forwards facing handcuffs. He pulls as hard as he can in both directions, and the strain tears right through the metal links connecting his wrists. 

It’s probably not going to be a good idea to stand, but Peter can fight now. He has his will, he has his hands, he has his spirit, and he has something to fight for. May has always lectured him for it, but Peter is the type of person who gets involved. He can’t simply watch. 

The Professor’s still on the floor, and Peter delivers some pretty heavy elbows. It is with great pleasure when he hears something crack in the other man’s chest. The guy is totally winded, and Peter is going to use the opportunity to get as many hits in as he can. Punch after punch reaches the Professor’s face, and Peter holds nothing back. 

His fists are bloodied and bruised, but he keeps going. The man is obviously unconscious, his nose is broken, his lip split, both eyes bruised. He probably has a concussion already, and it’s quite possible that Peter will beat him to death. He thinks of the bodies, of the woman split in half, of Aaron, and he can’t bring himself to care. 

Not until there’s a hand in his hair and Peter’s whirling around, struggling, feeble attempts to protect himself from further attack. The man is standing, and Peter can’t hit anything, and he’s sure he’ll be locked up and tortured again, and then there’s a voice. 

“Kid, kid, calm down. It’s just me, it’s Aaron,” Peter freezes and takes a moment to confirm that it is, indeed,  Aaron. His eyes are the clearest Peter has seen them, and there’s almost a smirk on his face, “We’re gonna get out of here, c’mon.” 

Aaron grasps one of Peter’s hands and attempts to haul him to his feet. It hurts so much. His knees can’t bend and they can’t support his weight, and he falls right back on them. There are black spots in his vision and he knows he’s screaming, but he has to escape. He has to suck it up and persevere. He has to. 

“Can’t walk,” Peter grunts through the pain, “I’ll drag myself,”

Aaron looks like he wants to pull Peter accross the room, but they both know he’s too weak. He’s been here for Peter doesn’t know how long, and his back must be royally messed up. 

Peter does exactly as he says, one arm at a time, he drags his body against the smooth, cold floor. It’s slow going, but they’re moving. The door is unlocked, and it’s no problem to get through. It’s a stroke of luck that there’s a small cart there, presumably for the many cameras and devices the Professor lugs around. 

They share a look, and Peter is climbing in. 

“You’re back is going to be okay?” He asks. They don’t need two incapacitated individuals.

“My ma used to have back problems,” Aaron answers, “She always said that pushing the grocery cart helped. Let’s hope she’s right.” Aaron shrugs, and he starts pushing, and suddenly they’re moving so much faster. 

There’s an elevator. The lift is grumbling and straining, and the wallpaper is peeling. But it’s an  _ elevator.  _ And isn’t that just a miracle? 

Aaron presses a button, and just like that they’re going up. It’s slow and it’s bumpy and it jostles Peter’s knees at moments but when the elevator doors open to some sort of lobby, it’s like he’s taking his first breath of air in years. 

They walk out like they’re discovering a new world. The doors open and it’s night and there’s a cool breeze and light rain and Aaron laughs, with real, pure joy. Peter laughs too. He sticks his tongue out and catches droplets and he had been so thirsty. 

It’s a slow journey from the old apartment complex, but it’s exhilarating. There’s hope. Peter’s going to be able to call Mr. Stark, and they’re going to get him home. Mr. Stark is going to figure out a way to fix his knees, and they’ll catch the bad guys together, and somehow everything is going to be okay. 

“What’s the first thing you’re going to say when you see your daughter?” Peter asks, and he sees the spark light up in Aaron’s eyes. They’re going to be okay. They’re both going to be okay. 

“I’m going to tell her how much I love her,” Aaron says. He looks down at Peter as they walk. Peter doesn’t know how to respond, but everything feels perfect. He’s in pain, he’s cold, and he’s hungry, but he’s  _ free _ and nothing can top that. 

He’s free until Aaron slips in a puddle and the cart falls onto it’s side, depositing Peter into the gutter. He’s free until Aaron hits his head on the dark pavement with a painful crack. He’s free until-

No, he’s free until he’s not anymore. The area they’re in seems to be mostly townhouses, but there are street lights, and he’s sure somebody must be awake to see them. Somebody has to walk by. Somebody has to see them as people who need  _ help _ and somebody will call 911 for them. 

Aaron’s unconscious on the ground beside him, but Peter’s not ready to give up hope. Not yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, i told you guys that I was ahead of schedule. I have never written so much in such a short period of time. Yesterday, I completed three chapters, including this one. You guys know I love to write, but after all of that last night, I just got so stressed out. 
> 
> So, I think I'm going to be taking a little break. I don't know how long. You'll still get a chapter update tomorrow, but I don't know if Monday's will be ready on time. That being said, I'm still going to update at least once or twice a week for sure. I just need some time. When I write, I end up very thoroughly invested in the story and the minds of my characters. Peter gets stressed out and I get stressed out. 
> 
> Your support means a lot. I know I'm not the best author in the world, and I'm sure everybody else knows as well, but you guys mean the world to me. Your comments and kudos inspire me to keep going, and I'm so grateful for that. 
> 
> Thank you.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how amazing you guys are. 
> 
> I've been writing so much and I've been freaking out so much. I read your comments, and it brightens my day, honestly. You're all so important to me. 
> 
> To answer a couple questions;
> 
> I don't think I'm going to use thumbscrews here. But there's no way this is going to be my last dark Spidey fic, and it's always a possibility for the future. 
> 
> Somebody asked where they can read about these things. Honestly, there are a ton of different sources you can find information on. A lot of it, I actually learned from visiting a torture museum in Toledo, Spain, back in 2010. If you let me know which particular instruments or practices you're interested, I could gather a list of reading materials for you.

Nobody is awake to see them. Nobody walks by and nobody calls 911 for them. 

Peter sits in the gutter for hours as the rainfall hardens. It’s cold and awful, and he has no clothing to protect his body warmth or give him shelter from the storm. All he has are his  _ New York Rangers _ boxers and a perfectly unaware friend. 

Aaron doesn’t wake up throughout the entire thing. There’s blood on the pavement and Peter doesn’t know whether he should be glad or grieving if the man is dead. He hasn’t lost hope that somebody has seen them yet, and there still is a possibility, no matter how small, that they’ll find their way home. 

On the other hand, if Aaron is dead and if they’re caught, the man won’t have to die in agony on a giant wooden stake. If Aaron is already dead, then his last moments will have been of beautiful freedom and he will have died with a friend besides him. 

It’s been hours of complete silence, and Peter hopes he’s dead. 

When he looks at himself - his broken handcuffs, his even more broken knees - Peter doesn’t see… He sees a stranger’s body. It’s bloody and beaten. He can tell that he’s already lost weight and he knows he probably smells like shit. There are goosebumps on his skin, and his entire front side is scratched from Peter dragging himself across the floor. 

He remembers wishing that Mr. Stark and Aunt May never find his body, but he wants to retract that now. He wants to be found and held and, if he dies, he wants to be mourned. It’s a macabre thought, for sure, but it’s seeming more and more likely with each passing second. He’s just in so much pain and it helps, just a little, to imagine Aunt May running her fingers through his hair, and kissing his wounds. It helps to imagine Mr. Stark hunting down the Professor and bringing him to justice, to imagine him finding all the other bodies and bringing closure to the families of missing people. 

He lies in the gutter that Aaron’s blood is draining into, and it’s the first water Peter has come into contact with since he’s been capture. It’s disgusting and horrible, he knows, but he’s just so thirsty. It’s not like anybody’s watching him dip his head into the drainage and slurp up the dirty ground water. 

It could be full of bacteria and germs and it could make him sick. It could kill him. Peter smiles. Wouldn’t that be nice? As if the universe has ever favoured him in any way. 

The blackness is fading into light by the time a white van rolls down the street. It’s so stereotypical, but the guy’s a kidnapper, what else would he drive? Peter doesn’t fight when the Professor’s goon throws him into the back of the vehicle. He’s just grown so tired. He had thought escape was possible, but it’s not. It’s hopeless. He’s hopeless. 

  
  
  


…..

 

They put him in a birdcage. It’s large enough to hold him, of course, but it’s tight. He can’t stand in it and his legs are bent forcefully and awkwardly. He probably could break the bars, but he simply sits, curled into a painful ball, while they hoist the thing into the air. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t fight. 

Aaron is very thoroughly secured with belts. There must be at least fifteen, beginning around his shoulders and ending around his ankles. He might be able to bend his torso forward a little bit, but other than that he’s completely incapacitated. 

He’s alive, but they’re going to kill him as soon as he wakes up. The Professor has already explained it in one of his awful video blogs. It sounds horrible and painful and humiliating. Peter hopes that his friend never wakes, he hopes that the man has sustained brain injuries and is in a coma. He hopes that Aaron doesn’t have to die in agony. 

The world isn’t so kind. 

It takes a few more hours, but Aaron certainly does wake. He does so with a gasp and a frantic inspection of his surroundings. Peter can see his heart fall. He’s struggling to escape his bonds, but the moment he sees Peter’s cage, he falls limp. Aaron knows they’ve failed. It’s over. 

The Professor must have hired another assistant, because there’s a large, young, muscular man. It’s the same person that had thrown Peter in the van. The same man that had hoisted Peter’s cage into the air. The same guy that easily picks Aaron up in a bridal style and waits for a command. 

It should make Peter happy that the Professor had needed to pick up a new assistant. It means that the man can’t do any of the heavy work himself right now. In addition to the swollen black and blue masterpiece that is the Professor’s face, Peter must have broken some of the man’s ribs. 

He can’t feel much of anything at the moment. There’s sadness and there’s hopeless tragedy. There’s not much more left. He wonders what Mr. Stark would say. Peter’s pathetic. He’s been through one torture and already he wants to die. 

Aaron’s eyes meet his as the new assistant lifts him over the large wooden spike. Soon, the stake will be slowly impaling him, under the weight of his own body. He doesn’t know yet. Peter knows. 

He’s expecting the scream, but that doesn’t make it any less piercing. That doesn’t make it okay.

They’ve placed Aaron in a sitting position on the instrument. The man is still holding Peter’s friend, but already he’s sinking, and already there’s blood. 

Aaron is screaming and crying, and there’s nothing Peter can do but watch. Once he’s sunken a few inches, the new assistant steps back, watches it happen. 

It’s so slow. Aaron’s screams are breaking and his voice is cracking, but he’s not dead yet. He’s nowhere near. He’s too skinny and the force isn’t enough to just push him down all at once. 

Peter’s sobbing. Aaron’s last moments are tormented, but he has to look away. He can’t watch his friend - the one person who’s shown him kindness - dying slowly. He closes his eyes and he listens to the tortured sounds and he cries. There’s not much else to do. 

The sound of his name is broken and slurred, but it’s there. He’s being called to by a dying man. It’s a last piece of comfort and he can’t deny Aaron that, no matter how much it hurts. He peeks through the bars of the cage to see his friend, still slowly sinking onto the stake, centimeter by centimeter. The man’s looking back at him, and his eyes are wide, and full of pain, and there’s blood on his chin and he’s dying. 

“I-I-I’ll talk to y-your daughter,” Peter manages through the sobs. Aaron is watching him, and his eyes soften slightly at the words, “And your wife. I’ll tell them how much you love them, and I-I’ll-” There’s blood coming out of his mouth, “I’ll tell them how you helped me, and I’ll tell them that you thought of them the whole- the whole time.”

Peter doesn’t know how legible his words are anymore. He’s sobbing and he can’t stop and the words are coming as they will. Aaron’s already sunken so far, and there’s so much blood. Aaron’s eyes are glassy, but they’re still focused on Peter. He’s hanging on. He’s trying so hard. 

“And I’ll make sure there’s-there’s a tombstone,” Peter sobs, “For Aaron Alexander. And I’ll-I’ll make sure everyone-” There’s an audible last breath, and Peter doesn’t try to stop the sob that’s bubbling to the surface, “I’ll make sure that everyone knows he died easy, no pain at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realistically, this type of impalement would take a hell of a lot longer. It often took up to three days for somebody to die in this fashion, but, for the sake of the story timeline, our man dies a lot faster. 
> 
> Aaron Alexander is a real character, he's extremely minor, only showing up in one issue with the Fantastic Four. He seems like a really nice guy though, so I decided he would be Peter's friend in this time. That being said, I don't keep those kinds of characters around for long.
> 
> Our boy can't have nice things, and I'm so so sorry about that, but I think we're about halfway through, so that's something to be happy about. Maybe.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I guess I actually did get it done XD. And it looks like we're going to continue with the daily updates! You guys keep me going. So the next couple chapters may be a little short, but they're there and stuff happens, and that's good. 
> 
> I'm trying my hand here at writing some more psychological torture. Forcing our boy to watch everyone around him die is, admittedly, torture, but I wanted to try something more obvious, so here. 
> 
> Honestly, I don't know if it's any good. You're going to have to tell me.

“We’re going to have to move again!” The Professor announces. He sounds cheerful, like he’s not standing in front of two recently murdered, bloody bodies.

Nobody seems to react. Not the man in the globes, not the woman in the chair, not Peter. It’s a statement, and it’s out there, and it doesn’t matter because they’re all going to die anyway. They’re just waiting it out, in the smell of death and shit and piss soaked clothing. 

Both of the Professor’s assistants are here today, they’re setting down cameras again, and, vaguely, Peter wonders what it’s going to be this time. 

“We’re going to have to go out of order,” The Professor says, “Thanks to a little escape attempt, I’m going to have to kill somebody today.” 

Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s finally Peter’s time and he can die quick and be done with it. He closes his eyes and releases a breath. Since they’d hung him by his wrists and… Since then, his breathing has been awful. He doesn’t know how long he had dangled, but his lungs still haven’t recovered. 

His hanging cage doesn’t move. Nothing changes. When Peter looks down, the Professor is standing in front of the woman. She’s seated and, when she looks up, she seems just as tired as Peter. 

Peter would have thought that the spikes in the woman’s chair are torturous enough, but it seems that she’s going to have to endure more. There’s sympathy and a brief moment of envy. He knows she must have been here for days. She must be in pain and she must be waiting for death too, but Peter wishes it were his turn instead. 

The Professor is surprisingly careful when he releases her restraints. If not for the blood and the metal thorns, he would look like a gentleman waiting to help a lady up. But there is blood, and there are thorns, and he’s gripping her arm and pulling her away from the chair. 

She cries, but only for a second. The Professor backs away, he’s not leading her anywhere, taking her to any awful device. She seems surprised, and Peter wonders, just for a second, if the man is simply letting her escape. 

It becomes clear that he’s not, when Peter sees the blood. There’s so much of it, coating her back. She’s bleeding from a million different holes in her body. The Professor is speaking, saying something about the intrusions keeping her from bleeding out while she was seating. About how her movement causes the wounds to open up and how she’s got no more than a few minutes left. 

She’s not standing for long. She sways on her feet for a few seconds before she crumples to the ground. Her eyes are slowly closing, and the globe man’s face reflects Peter’s jealousy. This woman is bleeding out. It’s so easy, and, comparatively, there must be so little pain. Peter wishes it were him, but he doubts his death will be as peaceful. 

“Hyoscyamine,”  The Professor says, once the woman is completely pale and motionless on the floor. He’s brandishing a syringe towards Peter, while his strong assistant begins lowering the cage, “It’s used to treat irritable bowel syndrome, do you believe that?” 

Peter doesn’t understand. It’s not as though he hasn’t been eating, so he’s not having any symptoms of an irritable bowel, besides small and occasional stomach cramps. The Professor seems to be waiting for a response, but Peter doesn’t ask. Some things, he’s learned are better unknown. 

The Professor tells him anyways, “In the middle ages, it was known to cause hallucinations, mood changes, delirium, and intense pain, usually meant to extract confession.” The cage is opening and the assistant is already pulling him out, grabbing his arms, and chaining them behind his back. There doesn’t seem to be any chain this time- just a hunk of metal with a couple of holes for his hands. 

“I’m giving you enough to kill an adult man,” The Professor says, “But, considering your metabolism, it will only give you the nasty side effects, probably,” 

Oh God Peter hopes it kills him. He doesn’t want any more pain. He just wants to die and be done with it, is that too much to ask? He’s struggling, but the Professor grabs his knee and he blacks out for a second. By the time Peter regains his composure, there’s a needle in his neck. 

  
  


….

He feels sick. He’s dizzy and he’s dry-heaving and he can’t see right. There’s so much pain, but it’s not only radiating from his knees anymore. It encompasses every particle of his being, like tiny needles digging into his flesh again and again. 

It’s nothing like his knees, not even similar. The pain in his knees has been blinding and intense, and awful, but it had been in his knees. He had been able to adjust himself, and, while it never stops hurting, he had found positions that hurt a little bit  _ less. _

This pain; it comes from  _ everywhere  _ and it stays  _ everywhere _ . No matter what he does, how he moves, the pain is there. He rolls and he whimpers and he groans, but no relief comes.

He’s in the back of the white van again, in what looks like a dog crate. Next to him, is the globe man. He’s wearing simple hand and wrist cuffs too, and he’s watching Peter as the boy whimpers and cries. It would be humiliating, if Peter could focus on anything but the pain. 

It takes about an hour for the hallucinations to begin. 

It starts with Mr. Stark. The man is sitting on a stool in front of Peter. His arms are crossed in front of his chest and his expression shows nothing but disappointment. The man looks impeccable, not a single hair out of place as his frown deepens. 

“I was kept prisoner for three months,” Mr. Stark says, an eyebrow raised, “You’ve been here for what, a couple days? I built the first Iron Man prototype out of scrap parts and you’ve already given up. Pathetic.” 

_ It’s not real, it’s not. _ Peter has to keep reminding himself. Mr. Stark would help him, Mr. Stark would bring Peter home and take away all of the pain. But he’s here, and he’s not helping and it’s not comforting. Peter has been hanging on to the people he loves, but they already know how pathetic he is. 

He’s going to die and nobody is going to show up to his funeral, because they all know how pitiful Peter Parker really is. They know he’s a complete mess and they know he can’t do anything. Hell, he can’t walk anymore. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. 

“I can’t believe you, Peter.”

He looks up again, squints. She’s standing right next to Mr. Stark and Peter wonders how he didn’t see her before. “Aunt May?” 

“I told you to check in on the hour,” She says, “And you never did. I was going to call the police, but you kept coming home and apologizing. It’s like you don’t care.” It’s strange and Peter wants to believe it’s not real, but she’s there and she’s so close he  _ could touch her _ . 

“You don’t care how much you hurt people. I’ve been taking care of you for years. I’ve raised you, and you left without a word,” Her voice is eerily cool, collected. It’s so wrong and it feels so distant and there’s nothing but pain and Aunt May and he  _ abandoned her _ .

“I’m sorry,” He gasps, turning rapidly between his aunt and his mentor, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t- I’m so sorry. I tried to-”

“We’re not going to look for you.” She says.

“You’re immature and reckless and something like this was bound to happen sooner or later,” Explains Mr. Stark, “You’re nothing more than a casualty. A fatality. That’s all you ever were.” 

Peter doesn’t know what to say. He’s gasping and gaping and of course they’re not looking for him. He’s weak, and it’s not like they need him. He’s going to die and they’re not going to care. They’re going to keep living. 

As if illustrating his point, Ned and MJ appear and Peter wants to wonder where the adults went, but he can’t seem to focus on it. His friends are playing a game together. Something silly with their hands. It’s one of the games where they keep moving faster and faster. Peter watches until there’s a bump in the road and his knees are jostled and he whimpers. 

“Goddamn it, Peter,” MJ looks at him like he’s a mosquito. Her eyes are narrowed and her face is hard. She’s as intimidating as she’s always been, but now it’s directed right at  _ him  _ and he draws back. 

“We were so close to beating a record too,” Whines Ned, and only then does Peter realize he’s interrupted their game. He’s so slow, it’s taken him way too long to notice. He used to have killer reflexes. He used to know things before they even happened. Now it’s delayed until moments after.

“What are you doing here, Parker?” MJ asks. Ned nods. 

“There’s a reason we didn’t invite you,” Ned reiterates, as if Peter hadn’t heard the hatred in MJ’s voice. He wants to argue that he’s been here the entire time, and they’re the ones who have just shown up, but everything is so confusing, and he’s not completely sure. 

“We don’t need you anymore,” MJ scoffs, “It’s not like you were ever around to hang with us anyways.”

Ned smiles apologetically. “Bye Peter,” He says, “Nice knowing you.”

They’re gone as suddenly as they came. 

And Peter, again, is alone. 

His sight has become so blurry, and everything has become so bright. He can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore, his thoughts have become so misconstrued. At one point, he has a fleeting thought that he could be in a rocket ship, headed to Mars. 

But it sticks, and his brain tells him that; yes, this is a spacecraft and yes, he is on his way to meet the Martians. It’s wrong and it’s strange and he doesn’t understand it, but it seems real. It seems true. Mars would be a cool place to die. 

For some reason, the prospect of asphyxiation and burning up and possibly aggressive alien life doesn’t bother him. Besides the pain, Peter feels relatively all right. Relatively at peace. And then he doesn’t. 

He can feel his heart beating differently, too fast, too hard, too wild. The peaceful feeling is gone, replaced by anxious anticipation. Something’s shouting at him to _ look up, look up _ so he does.

Everything around him is blurry, but there’s an image there, in great clarity, like he’s looking through a HD filter. 

Aaron. Covered in blood. He’s limp and supported only by the  _ giant wooden stake piercing through his body.  _ It’s come out his back, and now it’s just behind his head, emerging from just between the shoulder blades. Peter feels sick again, but there’s nothing left to come up when he retches and it only hurts his throat. 

The man, dark and dead and tortured, suddenly raises his head. His eyes are empty and pure white and void, and they’re staring right at him. When he opens his mouth, there’s blood coming out, and then he speaks

“You let me die.” Peter’s screaming, and Aaron is watching on pitilessly, “You could have shouted. You could have found a payphone and called the emergency services. But you didn’t. Now my girl doesn’t have a father.” 

But it’s not Aaron anymore, now it’s MJ. She’s watching Peter in horror and he’s watching her suffer and struggle and he’s watching the light go out of her eyes. She repeats the same words, “You let me die. You couldn’t save me, Peter, you couldn’t save anyone.”

And it’s May, reaching out to him. He tries to escape the handcuffs, to hold her hand, to comfort her in her dying moments. She’s being impaled on a wooden stake and he can’t even reach her. 

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, fists his hands, and tries to ignore the taunts, the words, the blame. He can still see them with his eyes closed, impaled, sawed in half, bleeding out. 

He’s left them. He’s failed them and they’re never coming back for him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hyoscyamine is actually taken orally. It was mixed into concoctions or "potions" in the medieval ages, but I really can't imagine Peter willingly eating or drinking anything this guy gives him.
> 
> Look, I know I'm an awful person. I'm disturbed and mad and I have so many unresolved issues. But let me explain it a little bit for you guys- I've been struggling with mental illness almost my entire life. I have PTSD from something that happened to me when I was seven. I have so many types of depression and anxiety and a shitload of other crap, I even have a service dog to help me cope at school. I've had a lot of trouble and it's kind of a medical miracle that I'm alive right now. The best piece of advice i was ever given was "if you feel like doing something to yourself, do it to your characters instead" and that's what I've been doing ever since. I don't know when or how it extended itself to fears. When something comes into my mind, when I'm afraid of something or something hits me, it helps to write it down. I can't look at my dog without thinking about how he's going to die. I can't talk to my friends without a million awful scenarios running through my mind. And I suck at journaling, so I write it here. I do it to Peter, who i see so much of myself in and I love so dearly. I know that he's fifteen, trust me. I know I'm awful. But this is what helps me get by, so I do it. And it helps some other people get by too, so it's here for you guys as well. Many of you are reminding me of how terrible I am in my PMs or comments. I know guys, trust me I know. But I'm going to keep doing it, because in the end, it's the healthiest coping mechanism I've got.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of you have any idea how much you mean to me. A lot of us have been through shit and none of us have the same experiences but it's honestly so comforting to know you guys have my back...
> 
> Now, last chapter I got a lot of questions about Tony, May, and Peter's friends. By coincidence, this chapter just happens to be from our favorite Iron Dad. 
> 
> It goes pretty fast, since the stuff happening isn't as intense as the stuff happening to Peter, but I think it gets us where we need to be going.

It’s been three days. Three days without rest. Three days without joking. Three days without comfort. Three days without Peter.

Nobody has any idea what happened to the kid. Tony is the last person to hear from him, but he had been eating lunch and he’d pushed it to the side. The status read non-emergency anyways. He knows that he’ll regret it for the rest of his life.

There had been a warehouse, and there had been bodies, and there had been no sign of the kid. It makes sense, the scene had been pretty gruesome, even altered by Peter to allow the victims some rest. Supervising the cleanup process made Tony nauseous, he can’t imagine what it would have been like for a child. 

So, he’d assumed that Peter had gone to get some air, and he decided to give the kid some space. 

Nine hours and a frantic call from May Parker later, and Tony was anxiously searching for any footage of the warehouse, any connection to Karen, and sign of the young hero he had been tasked with protecting. 

There is no footage of the warehouse, the security cameras inside are long dead. He can’t find a signal from Karen, no matter how hard he tries. It’s not just the GPS location either, the Baby-Monitor Protocol and all measurement of Peter’s vitals are inaccessible as well. The kid could very well be dead. 

Peter’s body could be rotting in some unknown location, and the thought terrifies him. He can’t imagine finding the kid tortured as the bodies in the warehouse were. Peter’s just a kid. He’s just a kid who wants so badly to do some good in the world. 

Tony can’t entertain the thought that they’ll find Peter injured, or dead, or that they won’t find Peter at all. Instead of sleeping, he searches through every traffic camera, every security film, every goddamn photo taken in the area. He leaves no stone unturned and still, Peter has just… disappeared. 

Twelve hours after he discovers the boy missing, Tony files an Amber Alert. There are calls and replies, but nothing ever comes of it. Each and every clue is a false lead, and it just breaks May and Tony a little bit more. 

In two days, Tony calls the rest of the Avengers in. He tells them what they need to know about Peter Parker, doesn’t mention Spider-Man, and sends them out to do their thing. 

Nobody finds anything. Tony is forced to swallow his pride and call Steve. The man brings in Bucky Barnes, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton, and Sam Wilson. They’re all masters of their trade, and all of their searches turn up fruitless. 

It’s been three days and they’re going on the fourth night when F.R.I.D.A.Y. finds  _ something.  _

The AI has been sending Tony any police reports and security footage she thinks may be even remotely relevant. She tells him of a small neighborhood, where some people had casually reported two drunk or high men. She tells him that there’s security footage, but that she can’t get a clear picture of the faces in them. 

Tony watches. 

There is a man, and a grocery cart, and a boy. They’re all in the underwear, with exception to the grocery cart. 

There’s no audio, but Tony thinks he understands well enough. The film is awful quality, but the boy has light brown hair and he’s small, and relatively Peter shaped. He’s being pushed in a cart, but he seems to be awake. Then the walking man slips, and the cart turns over, and they’re both on the ground for hours. 

The white van that picks them up definitely does not belong to the local authorities, but he can’t get a read on the license plate. He forwards the video to the rest of the team, tells them to find what they can. In a couple hours, they head out on the quinjet. 

They end up in a North Jersey neighborhood. While Natasha and Clint go door-to-door, Tony inspects the space that Maybe-Peter had been laying in the film. It’s still wet from the rain, and any evidence that may have once been there is now washed away with the groundwater. 

Natasha tells him about an abandoned apartment building, just a quarter mile down the road, so that’s where they go. The building is only five stories, with the addition of three parking levels. They split into groups, and they all take a floor. 

Tony is with Banner on the third level. They kick in every door and check every room, but it’s all empty. There’s no sign of Peter, there’s no sign of anything. 

And then Steve’s voice comes over the com. 

“Boss, I’m on P2. You’re going to want to come see this.”

Tony definitely, definitely does not want to see it. There’s a shit ton of blood and three bodies and none of them are Peter. 

He’s seen his fair share of gruesome scenes before, but it’s never been anything even comparable to this. There’s a woman hanging upside down. She looks like she’s been crudely cut in half by a preschooler learning to wield scissors. Her eyes are open, her skin is gray and she’s in two fucking pieces. There are already flies swarming around her. There are flies swarming around all the bodies. 

Tony wonders how long they’ve been left here to rot. His question is answered quickly, by the blood still dripping out of one man. The puddle of blood underneath this guy is massive. His eyes are open wide, and his mouth is open wider. It looks like he’s screaming. It looks like he’s suffering. To be fair, there is a giant stick impaling him lengthwise. Of course he is.

The last woman’s body isn’t quite cold yet, although it’s not warm. She’s lying facedown in a puddle of her own blood. Her back is mauled by what must be hundreds of shallow stab wounds, and the chair behind her is an obvious culprit. 

There are three bodies. There are four completely separate large blood stains. The fourth one scares him the most, because he doesn’t know who it’s from or where they’ve gone. It could be Peter’s. Peter could already be dead. Tony scrapes up a sample to be sent to the lab. 

It’s a lot of blood and whoever lost it could very easily be dead now, but they could also be alive. They could also be suffering. 

Tony doesn’t know which scares him more; The idea of telling May her nephew is dead without a body. An empty casket funeral while Peter rots somewhere, in some awful contraption, face permanently marred with pain. Or, the idea of bringing Peter home. The idea of finding the body and learning exactly how Peter died. May’s screams and cries at the sight of her mutilated nephew. 

Tony’s going to do whatever he can to find the kid. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll return to them alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm working on chapter eleven out of, i think, twelve. It's not yet for you, but writing this story is almost over for me, and it's honestly been a pleasure interacting with all of you. I love you guys so much and you do more for me than you could ever know. 
> 
> That said, this will not be my only SM:H story! The next one on the agenda is wayyyy less angsty than this. It concerns Peter being placed under a 'curse' where he has to make spider puns and spider jokes all the time and it's going to be absolutely awful. Still, I think after spending almost two weeks on this one, I've gotta write something a bit more lighthearted.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So school actually seems like it's going to be pretty okay this semester. I've got some awesome classes and I'm going to be able to attend college visit presentations and stuff at my school. I'm trying really hard to get my grade above a 4.2 so that I can get into one of my top choice schools (which right now are Georgetown and Johns Hopkins) but it doesn't really matter because I'll probably go somewhere different for pre grad and post grad anyways. Still.
> 
> You all know how i love you. Honestly I read and reread each of your comments, and I always get so excited when a comment notification comes onto my phone. It's good to know not everyone thinks I'm an awful person. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy. This is the first fic I'm going to complete that's more than 2 chapters. So I'm really excited and that's really cool!

 

Peter’s guess is that it takes about a day for the hallucinations to clear up. His sight is still a little bit blurry, and his body is still just radiating pain, but at least Peter knows what’s real now. Or, he thinks he does. It would really suck to mix up reality and imagination.

There are still moments when he hears something or sees something that isn’t really there, but by the time they reach their new location, he’s learned to ignore it.

They drag him and the other prisoner out one at a time. They’re not ceremonious about it either. The muscular assistant pulls Peter right out of the truck, letting him drop a couple feet to the pavement. He can’t catch himself, so he clips his chin and bites his tongue and his knees hit the ground with too much force and it hurts but it doesn’t really matter anyways.

Peter can look around. It’s night and it’s chilly. They seem to be in the greatest dessert of the Middle Of Nowhere. The flat wasteland goes out in every direction for as far as he can see. There are electrical poles and cacti and probably some lizards, but that’s about it.

Besides the little restaurant diner he’s being roughly dragged into. There are rocks and sand scratching at his bare skin, but he honestly doesn’t care too much. There’s been worse already. There’s bound to be worse in the future.

He’s dropped on the grimy tile floor, not too far away from the bar. Moments later, the other man is dropped next to him. They avoid meeting each other’s gazes.

There are windows in this place, and the thought nearly makes Peter smile. They’re boarded up, but it’s not masterful work. Maybe light will still be able to drift through. Maybe Peter will be able to start telling the time again.

The Professor walks through the double swinging door, greeting his prisoners with a grin. He squats down in front of Peter.

“I’ve found somewhere nice for you to hang out,” He says, “Quite literally.”

He sends one of his assistants out to the van, and she comes back with a stepping stool and a long chain. The other removes plaster tiles from the ceiling and threads the chain over a thick metal pipe. He brings one end of the chain down until it’s about Peter’s standing height, and then moves on to hold the other.

They’re going to put him in the birdcage again, it’s pretty obvious. And Peter isn’t too upset about that. The cage gives him enough room to breathe, to shift a little bit if he needs too. It doesn’t put unnecessary strain on his body and, all things considered, it’s relatively comfortable.

The Professor grabs the chain and attaches it to Peter’s manacles. He waits for the assistant to come back again with what Peter assumes will be his housing for the next few days.

She takes two trips and comes back heaving a couple shackles connected to large metal balls. That doesn’t seem right. At least, until muscular assistant begins hoisting his up by his wrists and he panics. His hands are behind him and he’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to bend in the way they’re about to.

He tugs on the chain, but he can’t build up the momentum to break it with his hands behind his back and his limited movement.

They pull him up more quickly than he expects them too and _God that hurts_. He can feel the muscles in his shoulders straining, he’s pretty sure he can hear the bones creaking, but he’s a good three feet off the ground now, and nothing has broken or dislocated yet.

And then the Professor hefts up a ball, and shackles it to Peter’s ankle.

“Seventy-five pounds,” He says. And then he lets it drop.

Peter can hear his shoulder popping out of place even through his scream. He can feel his knee and his ankle and his back screaming in protest, but he can’t do anything about it.

He’s crying again, and he thinks he imagines more bones snapping and breaking under the added weight. Then the second weight is added to his other ankle and Peter thinks he can feel his entire body literally break.

He screams, and he sobs, and he pleads but there’s no mercy. It’s 150 pounds extra pounds, nearly enough to double Peter’s own weight when he hangs from the chains. It hurts so much. Muscular assistant holds a camera, watching him whither and beg and cry in agony.

“Why?” He finally asks. The question has been bothering him all along and he can’t seem to find an answer. The Professor has nothing to gain, and these two young adults must have so much more to lose. He addresses the question to all of them. “Why are you doing this?”

“Education,” The Professor replies. The man doesn’t skip a beat. He’s a true psychopath. He must have no sympathy for other people, nothing but darkness and evil sits inside of him.

“I’m a professor of medieval history,” The man explains, and if it were any different situation, Peter would congratulate himself on the accuracy of the nickname, “There’s so much information lacking in some of these things, and there’s little to no account from the victims themselves. At least I’m not making you write,” The man frowns, “Not that you could very easily anymore, anyways. Don’t worry, your suffering is academically valuable.”

Peter gapes. Are these young people students? How are they going along with such inhumane practices? He knows he’s crying and he’s staring at all of them, but none of them seem to care.

“Besides,” The Professor says, “Beating me up last night wasn’t very nice.”

 

…

 

Peter doesn’t remember the last time he slept. Like really slept. The last time he closed his eyes and dreamed and woke up feeling better rested than he had before. Since he was captured, he’s been on edge. The closest thing he probably gets to rest is when he blacks out or his body quits on him.

He’s so tired. He wants nothing more than to close his eyes to the world and escape from the pain that has become his life, even if it is only for a few hours. He’s not going to be able to, he knows that before he even tries. Sleeping is a thing of the past. He will, quite literally, sleep only when he’s dead.

He closes his eyes anyway. Tries to focus on something other than the pain because the pain is everywhere now. He’s strong, but he hasn’t eaten in days and his body has been quickly wasting. His metabolism is too fast for this, he knows he can stay alive for a few more days, but he’s just so _tired._

He’s lost so much weight already. He knows that he’s become pale and skinny and that he’s probably awful to look at. At least, he supposes, looking at him won’t be as awful as being him. He’s pretty sure that he’s got everyone else beat in that department.

He hangs, still and motionless, as the sun comes up and streams of dusty light pour through the windows. It’s actually surprisingly beautiful. Peter feels as though he hasn’t seen sunlight in years, and, while there’s so little and it can’t quite reach him yet, it feels refreshing.

By the time the thin strip on sunlight has reached his toes, the door opens again, and he hears three people walking casually, dragging something large with them. His neck hurts so much, but he tries his hardest to lift it and see what’s waiting for him.

It’s not a punishment. Or maybe it is. There’s another man there, young, dark haired and still fully clothed. There’s blood flowing down his face in rivers. Peter’s sight is still blurry, and try as he might, he can’t make out where exactly the blood is coming from. They seat him on the floor in the middle of the room, not too far away from Peter.

They set his ankles in a large wooden block that reminds Peter of the stocks in Cold Springs. He would put his hands and his head through, and May would take photographs. When it comes down to it, this isn’t too much different. But they put this other man’s ankles in it and then they lock it. They put his wrists in cuffs attached closer to the top.

Then they leave again, as if they were never here.

Peter continues hanging, but the man is close enough for him to watch without having to turn his head too far. So he does watch. And it’s nice to see somebody looking relatively healthy wearing a shirt and shoes. It’s like getting a glimpse of the outside world. A glimpse that doesn’t want to kill him. A glimpse that’s going to die right after he does.

But the guy’s alive right now, and he doesn’t know what’s facing him yet. He doesn’t understand the terror or the emptiness he’ll be feeling so very soon. And hey, Peter will take what he can get. If there’s somebody here who’s not evil, and who hasn’t watched three people die recently, it’s good enough for him. The guy is third in order now, he’s Three. So Peter pretends that he’s Three and he has an okay life and he’s not been tortured horribly.

It’s a nice thought.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished writing chapter 11 last night. It... did not really end how i was planning it to... Not going to say much more than that because, spoilers, you know? So instead of 12, expect 13 chapters. 
> 
> And then, when I'm done with this, I have so many plans for future fics. I hope you all come back to see them and we can sort of stay connected in that way. There are plans for one that's not completely painful and awful, but the rest of them... Poor Peter.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umm... not as sure what to say today, since I haven't had very much time to work recently. My classes are good, but I'm taking some hard ones and i really do intend to get straight A's this year... Which means I sometimes have only thirty minutes a day for writing. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you like the chapter.

 

Peter has his eyes closed and he’s daydreaming when Three finally makes a sound. It’s a groan, and it’s soft and barely noticeable, but it’s there. The guy’s waking up slowly, until he tries to shift his position and finds that he’s stuck. Then he jumps and gasps and pulls. 

His head moves around, as much as it can in such a restricted position. He’s looking for something, anything to tell him where he is. Something familiar, some clue, some sort of escape. But his eyes don’t land on anything. He never stops to take in his settings and Peter thinks again of all the blood on his face. 

“Is somebody there?” The man asks after a few minutes. He looks so confused and lost and of course he is because that asshole took his eyes. Peter can’t say anything. He knows how that went last time, and, as much as he wants to, he can’t offer words of comfort or hope. It’s only going to hurt Three that much more. 

“H-Hello?” Three asks again, and he sounds so scared. Peter wonders if that what his voice had been like when he had first woken in the garage. It’s so hard not to offer help when the man whimpers “It’s so dark.”

Peter bites his lip, closes his eyes, and tries to block it all out. He tries to ignore the fact that the man is hiccuping and his voice sounds young and he’s probably not much older than the Professor’s assistants. 

The sun seems to be at its peak when Three wakes up. It’s just beginning to disappear when the trio of villains come through the door again. They’re loud and they’re laughing and they’re carrying what looks like a large gas tank with a hose. 

“Who’s there?” Three asks, and the Professor laughs. He sends the strong assistant into the kitchen while the other keeps bringing in gallons of water. The strong one brings out a giant soup pot and places it in the middle of the diner. He grabs Three by the back of his collar and drags him closer towards the wall.

Then they’re both getting water, and they’re dumping it into this giant pot, gallon by gallon. Peter counts forty until the thing is full and they’re pulling the prisoner who used to be in the globes towards it. 

He hardly fits, buts he’s skinny and they force him in until only his head sticks out. There’s already water splashing out around him, but they pull a cloth over top of his head and lay it out around his neck. It covers the top of the pot. 

Peter hadn’t noticed the cameras being set up, but they’re there now. The blinking red light watches him smugly, as if it knows he’s next. 

The Professor has the gas tank strapped to his back now, and he’s holding the hose and a nozzle in his hands. 

It’s a flamethrower. The Professor is going to boil a man to death, and nobody cares enough to stop him. Nobody wants to stop him. His assistants are watching on in fascination and Three has no idea what’s going on. Peter is the only one who can, but he doesn’t object. He’s grown so tired of the pain. 

So he closes his eyes as the room gets hot and the water boils and the man screams. He closes his eyes and he shuts his mouth and he doesn’t cry anymore. He doesn’t even flinch. 

Peter stops trying to measure time. He drowns out the man’s cries until he can’t hear them anymore. He drowns out everything. He doesn’t know when it’s over. 

He’s stopped feeling… human. It’s like he’s not even Peter anymore, he’s a number. He’s just One now. And then he won’t be One anymore and everything will be over and that will be absolutely fine by him. 

He knows that it means he’s losing something. Peter knows he’s always been an emotional person. He’s always been reactive. He’ll cry and he’ll laugh and he’ll talk about his feelings until people around him can’t stand it anymore. The thing is, it’s going to be so much easier not to. He doesn’t need to feel, he doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t need to hope, because those things never bring anything but pain. 

It’s so much easier not to feel or to think, and Peter doesn’t know how capable he is of doing either anymore. It’s like he’s already dead. He’s so tired of the fear, and he knows his mind is so tired of interpreting it. 

So he stops watching anything but the tile ground. He stops attempting to interpret the sound of the door opening, or new voices crying and pleading. He hears them, but his brain doesn’t care enough to respond to them anymore. He’s too numb. 

The room is dark and then it’s light again. They’re setting up the cameras again, and when the red light blinks up at Peter, he stares right back. This means it’s his time. It must. 

Sure enough, one of the assistants operates a hand-held recording camera while the other releases the chain on one side and lets him drop to the ground. There’s a loud thunk and he lands all wrong and there’s more snapping and crunching and he automatically cries out, but that’s it. 

Vaguely, Peter wonders how exactly he’s going to die. He thinks of the things he remembers from medieval history in school. They can shut him in a tiny spiky closet and keep him there until he’s meat. They can hang him by his neck. They can crush his head, or break his spine. They can take four horses and rip him apart limb by limb. 

Nothing like that happens. 

He can feel his hands being uncuffed, the metal weights being removed from his ankles. He’s being moved into what feels like… a bed? It’s tight and small, but they painfully move all of his limbs so that he’s laying straight. His legs are as parallel as they could possibly be with his knees. 

His arms - his painful, dislocated arms are stuffed in as neatly as they can be. He hears himself groaning, but there are no tears anymore. It’s lightly linen lined and it’s surprisingly comfortable, for the small amount of space Peter has. 

“Premature burial was usually reserved for women,” He hears the Professor say, “Often thieves, women who committed infanticide, rapists, and brutal murderers.”

Sounds like a punishment. Sounds like what he’s about to do to Peter. It’s okay, he thinks, at least he’s not being sawed in half or impaled. It doesn’t sound half as painful, and, if anybody ever does happen to find his body, at least they won’t have to see him bleeding and completely mutilated. 

He supposes that it’s a best case scenario, for everybody involved. He’ll die either by starvation, suffocation, or dehydration. There are worse ways to go. 

“Scaphism was a Persian method of execution, which we will, unfortunately, be unable to replicate fully. A victim would be force fed honey and sugar water for three days. They would then be sent out on a boat or left in the sun to be eaten alive by insects.”

That doesn’t sound like a good way to die. But it could speed up the decomposition process and maybe he’ll be found a skeleton. Maybe he’ll be so far gone that they’ll be unable to tell it’s even him and they won’t ever have to know it’s his mutilated and broken body. Maybe. 

The assistants pour something sticky over his body, starting in his hair and going to his feet. They’re not going to make him drink it, and at least there’s that. 

The Professor fixes what looks like a number of small cameras onto different walls of the coffin. He’s become so tired of fighting. He only watches as the Professor closes him into the darkness. He listens as they nail the thing shut only inches above his body. 

It’s all dark and it’s all silent. Maybe…

Maybe it’s finally time for Peter to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder sometimes who you think I am. Like how old am i? What do I look like? Am I even real? Am I just a bunch of squirrels in a trench coat that really like Spider-Man? Who knows? Do I know? Certainly Not. Do you know? Make your guesses below.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS NOT THE END. It is not the be-all end-all, it is a chapter. And, following this chapter will be at least two more. The things that happen and the conclusions that are drawn aren't necessarily reliable, at least, not yet. This may seem like we're coming to the end of our story, but we aren't. Not yet.

 

Tony has definitely miscalculated the sheer amount of white vans in New Jersey. They still don’t have a clear read of the licence plate, and it sucks. It’s awful and annoying and Tony is tired of tracking down every white van with a New York licence plate. It takes so long, and every minute could be Peter’s last.

When the blood that Tony had sent to his labs does come back as a match for one Peter Parker, it’s both terrifying and hopeful. Peter had been hurt, that was obvious. His glucose and iron levels are far too low, his phosphorus too high.

But, if there’s blood and no body, that must mean Peter was still alive when they arrived to the building. It seems like the killer leaves the bodies where they die, and if Peter isn’t there… that can only be a good thing, right?

Tony just really, really hopes they find him alive.

It’s Natasha that tracks Peter down. She somehow manages to find fingerprints that the police force hadn’t and matches them to five or six different suspects. That two of the fingerprint matches dead in the room really does help narrow it down. Two sets belong to relatively unremarkable pre-grad students at a local university. One set belongs to a middle aged professor of history at the same college. The fourth belongs to Peter.

The rest of the information isn’t nearly as difficult to find. Scott Lang, who is apparently both Ant-Man and a criminal hacker, gets their files easily. They have families, birthdays, hospital visits, arrests, social security numbers, licences that Scott manages to access online.

They find, quite quickly, that the historian owns a white dodge sprinter with a new york licence plate. Professor Daniel McClellan is not going to receive any mercy from Tony Stark. It should take less than twenty-four hours to find the man, and then they’ll make sure he’s locked away for life.

First comes the issue of tracking the plate number. It’s not difficult. Apparently, McClellan had taken Interstate 80, so Tony can see each and every toll booth the van had gone through. It seems to end up somewhere in Oklahoma. But the state is large, and it’s going to take a lot of time to find one car among millions.

Tony is lost, but Natasha and Clint have their ways, and they’re working on it.

Meanwhile, Tony is stuck catching up Peter’s aunt and his two best friends. He has to tell them that they found his blood. He explains that the boy is hurt, but he’s probably alive. He explains that they think he’s in Oklahoma. That they’ll find him. That they hope he’ll be back really, really soon.

It’s nothing like a promise, but they all seem relieved he should be coming home soon. Tony doesn’t have the heart to tell them that he may be coming home in a coffin.

It takes a long time, but Natasha comes to him one day with a missing person’s report. There’s nothing extremely weird about it, until she tells him that somebody else had gone missing a day before and that a white Dodge Sprinter van had been spotted both times.

It’s definitely something, and Tony takes it as a blessing. It’s a clue and it means that they’re one step closer to finding Peter and there’s no way he isn’t chasing that lead down.

They search the town, and then they scan a 20 mile radius around it. The two past locations they know of were abandoned buildings, so that’s a key phrase they’re looking for. There are so many though. Houses, and hotels, and restaurants, entire ghost towns. Every location is isolated in its own sense. There are too many places to look, and he thinks about narrowing the circle, but there are too many places Peter could be too.

So, the Avengers and the ex-Avengers split off into pairs, and they each search a list of locations. The idea is to observe, look for things like white vans, or dead tortured bodies, or Peter and then let the others know and plan the attack.

That’s not exactly how it goes.

Tony happens to be the person that spots a white van with a New York licence plate parked outside of an old boarded up diner. And nothing goes to plan. He can’t help himself; he storms right in - full armor and all.

Clint’s there, and he’s yelling at Tony to _Wait! Stop!_ But Tony doesn’t listen. Peter could be in there, and he needs to get to the boy. He needs to get the kid out of there and back into the arms of his aunt and friends.

So Tony doesn’t think about it. He gets up and he goes in and Clint has no choice but to follow.

It’s a big place for six people, but only three of those people are prisoners and Tony is so glad that there aren’t any more.

The old man and the girl are easy work. Tony almost forgets to set his repulsor beams to stun when he shoots them. He’s knocked out two, but Tony leaves the third captor to Clint and turns his attention to the captives.

There’s a man with short black hair on the ground, a woman in the corner, and a woman hanging from a chain by her feet. None of them are Peter.

Clint has the young man on the ground. The kid -because some of these people, these awful people are just college students- must have at least twenty pounds on the archer, but Clint has him pinned easy. The kid isn’t unconscious yet, and Tony literally flies at him, grabs the kid by the collar of his shirt and truly, physically growls.

“Where the hell is Peter?” He asks. Clint must have sent out some sort of message, because Steve is bursting through the door with Bucky Barnes. In moments, Wanda Maximoff and Scott Lang are there too. Nobody is holding Tony back. Nobody dares.

“Where the fuck is he?!” Tony demands when the man says nothing. The guy is staring and shaking and Tony doesn’t give a fuck.

“The-The kid?” The man asks, and Tony wants to punch him in the face. This guy knows Peter was a child. They all must have known. Tony doesn’t hold himself back.

“His name is Peter,” Tony says, as Steve pulls him back. He did, admittedly hit the guy really hard. For a second, he thinks he may have knocked the other man unconscious, but then;

“We-We buried him… Yesterday morning…”

Oh.

Peter’s in the ground. He’s gone. Dead. Buried. And that hits Tony close and hard. He’s having trouble paying attention while Steve guides him back outside.

“Shit...” Because that’s all he can say. Steve, the man he hasn’t spoken to in months, the man who had turned around and stabbed him in the back- Steve's there comforting him… He can’t find it within himself to push the man away.

Because Peter, the closest thing Tony has ever had to a child, is dead. And God the kid had been so annoying sometimes, he could go on for hours about nothing at all. He could grate on Tony’s nerves like nobody else ever could. But Peter could also give him something almost akin to family, somebody to take care of. And Peter is dead.

“Shit.” He says again, because there really is nothing else he can express. A child is dead. A child died alone after five days of pain and torture. A child died with nobody by his side, nobody there to hold his hand. A child had been Peter and now a child is no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the first time since I started, tomorrow's chapter is not yet complete. I'll get it done, I swear, but I probably won't post it at the normal time, 6:45am EST. School is wild, history is wild, all my hard classes are in the afternoon and they love to pile me with homework. World History is awesome, don't get me wrong. It's just... Chapter outline notes... for a lot of chapters...... 
> 
> Daily reminder that you're all awesome and valuable and I love you guys. Keep reading, keep writing, and keep doing what you do.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you it isn't the end. It is not the end.

Tony isn’t sure how he’s ever going to tell May. He doesn’t know if he can. She would have to be the person to tell Peter’s friends, his school, everybody who knew him, and Tony isn’t sure he can do that to her.

Such a large part of him wants to simply lie. He wishes he could tell May that they don’t know where Peter is. He could convince her that Peter escaped, that he’s still alive but he’s hidden somewhere and they don’t know when he’ll come back. 

She deserves more than that. She deserves to know what has become of her beloved nephew. She deserves to know how he died. 

Fuck, Tony doesn’t even know how he died. It must have been agonizing. The rest of the bodies had been left contorted with pain and fear. He wonders just how bad it must have been if even the murderers couldn’t bare to look at their work. They had buried him and part of Tony doesn’t even want to find the body. 

And for what? To offer May knowledge of a horrific death with no sense of closure? He can’t do that to her. He doesn’t think he can do that to himself. Already, his mind is forcing scenarios into his head. He imagines Peter burning, imagines them cutting off his limbs, imagines him laying, wide-eyed, in a puddle of blood. 

Tony knows that the images are going haunt him until he knows exactly what happened to the boy. He knows that once he finds out… Well that’s probably going to haunt him too. Between the two options, he thinks he needs to go with the second. 

He assumes it doesn’t take very much time to calm himself down. Steve is there the entire time, and it takes Tony entirely too long to shrug the other man off. 

“Let’s get them into custody,” He says, turning to Steve, “We’ll find what evidence we can, and we’ll get those other people to a hospital. We can decide where we go from there.”

And he’s walking back inside, sending messages for medical transports and alerting the authorities. The Avengers are sorting everything out. They’re consoling the prisoners and searching for evidence and Tony is very pointedly ignoring the boiled piece of very human-shaped meat in the very large pot. 

It’s a large team, and they cover the diner in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t take long to move outside, and then Tony is tearing down the back doors of the van. There’s so much shit in there, it’s packed. 

There are tools, and chains, and weapons, and Tony is pretty sure that’s a  _ flamethrower _ . These people have packed so many boxes, arranged in rows along the sides of the van. The aisle is only large enough to fit a single file line, so that’s how they move in. First it’s Tony, and then Natasha, and then Clint, and he’s passing boxes below, to Scott, and Wanda, and Steve, and it’s actually kind of nice to have the team back together again. 

Wanda uncovers the first box of video tapes. They’re labelled with dates and times and numbers. Tony counts about twenty-five, but he’s sure there are more. Clint discovers the second, and Tony finds the third. 

There’s an entire collection. If they’re going to find anything, it’s going to be here. 

  
  


…

Tony only realizes after the fact that he should not have watched the videos. He didn’t want to watch the videos. They’re awful from the beginning, and when Peter appears on tape 45, Tony feels like he’s going to throw up. 

The kid looks… He looks okay. That is; he looks terrified but he’s not bleeding anywhere, he doesn’t look like he’s dying yet. Then there’s a man approaching and Peter is trying to get away, his tinny voice through the recorder begging for his own safety. 

Tony feels sick. He’s watching the beginning of the end. The beginning of Peter’s end. 

The team doesn’t say anything when they see the blue and red colored suit, although a few frown and glance towards Tony. They know better than to speak while the man takes a knife and cuts Peter’s clothing right off him. The room is silent when the knife is driven into Peter’s thigh, the only thing any of them can here is a fifteen year old screaming. 

But it doesn’t end there. In a few minutes, there’s another shout from off screen and Peter snaps to attention because of course he does. The boy’s pleads and shouts are much more intense than they had been while he had pleaded for his own life. The video ends when Peter struggles to his feet and runs off screen. 

All the tapes are titled similarly in marker. They all begin with the date, and follow with a ‘Subject’ number. On the far left, is a letter. They go upwards of A and restart on a daily basis, and Tony can only assume it’s to differentiate between the different daily tortures. 

The team unanimously agrees to watch Subject: 08’s - _ Peter’s _ \- tapes first. Scott organizes them in order of time, and insists that they should watch from the beginning. He says that knowing the trauma now will be better than finding it on a dead body. Tony wants to argue, but it’s true. He’s still not completely positive that he’ll be able to find the body, but Scott’s right. If he knows about the injuries he can prepare and treat Peter’s body with dignity and respect, and not like a horrifying spectacle. 

Unfortunately, the tapes translate to hours of pain and torture. Most of what Tony finds, thank God, are simply videos of Peter watching. But there are others sprinkled in there, and he can see the boy’s knees being crushed, can see him fighting for his freedom with a fellow prisoner, can see him laying in a wire cage and crying. 

And it’s not right. The boy should be able to break through those bars, it’s too uncharacteristic for him not to try. Not to do anything as screams echo from behind the camera. 

The tears seem to never stop leaking from the poor kid’s eyes, even as his mouth moves to words Tony can’t make out through the heaving sobs. In time, the scene changes to the back of the same van they had stood in just hours before. Peter’s cowering a dog crate. A goddamn fucking dog crate. He’s talking to thin air and saying Tony’s name and that enough.

Tony had watched torture, had watched the kid - _ his  _ kid bleeding and sobbing and suffering. Every moment had been hell, but this… This is too much. Peter’s been through shit, they all have. A surprisingly awful number of the team has been through torture. But they had all jumped back and Peter is sitting there and Tony can’t keep watching the light fade from his young eyes. 

He’s not strong enough to see this. Tony has to step out of the room. He has to find himself an empty room to break down in because  _ shit.  _ Peter had always been so optimistic, had always been energetic and excited, and Tony just watched his personality being visually drained from him. It is so not okay. 

He’s trying to breathe, trying to get his mind in order, trying to fend off a an anxiety attack that is all but guaranteed at this point, when F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice breaks into his stupor;  _ ‘Sir, there seems to be important information regarding Peter Parker,’ _

A moment later, the door is bursting open and he wants to say that half of the team is there, staring at him. Vision is the one to speak up, the one to deliver the news;

“The tapes suggest that Peter Parker’s burial occurred prematurely. He may still be alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't really... edit this. I may come back later and go through it again, but right now it's just a once over that I'm giving you. Sorry. :/


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, sorry. It gets across what it needs to, though, I think. Tony acts violently, because, c'mon, his anger and stress would definitely be overpowering most thoughts of rationality by this point. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

 

When Tony Stark wants something, he gets it. It’s been that way since he was a small child, and yeah, it’s probably definitely had a problematic influence on his developing mind, but that’s just the way the world spins. 

When Vision tells him that Peter might still be alive, Tony commands he be allowed to speak with one prisoner, one Daniel McClellan, and nobody dares to deny him. It’s true that he may have been a spoiled child, but when he needs to, Tony can use that privilege to his advantage. 

Like now, when he stands in an interrogation room, holding a middle aged history professor by the collar of his brand new prison jumpsuit, and yelling his lungs out. McClellan is wide-eyed and shaking and scared, and Tony wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Steve is standing behind him. It’s not a good cop - bad cop scenario. They’re not both asking questions and they’re not both screaming at an ugly, orange clothed man. No, Steve just stays in the corner to make sure nobody dies in this room. Killing unarmed prisoners without the proper authorization is a little bit illegal, even for Tony Stark.

Intimidating them, giving them pain and grief, now that’s something he can do. 

“Where the hell is my fucking kid?!” Tony all but roars. He punctuates each word with a sharp punch to the guy’s face and his knuckles are already bruising but he doesn’t care because the face is already bruising too. 

“I told you, he’s underground! We buried him, I’m sorry but he’s gone!” He’s putting on a brave face, but Tony can still hear the man’s voice shaking. It’s something of a pleasing sound. 

“I know he was still alive, I know he might still be alive. Where the fuck is he buried?” He’s hitting the guy again, but now Steve is pulling him back. 

“He can’t tell us anything if he’s unconscious,” The captain explains, and Tony still wants this person to hurt, this monster who tried to kill Peter. It’s reasonable, though. The guy’s face is a mess of snot and bruises and Tony doesn’t fight his friend’s hand on his shoulder. 

“Where did you put him?” Tony asks, more calmly now. McClellan doesn’t know how far Tony is willing to go. Hell, Tony doesn’t know how far he’s willing to go himself. 

“I don’t know,” McClellan admits, “We drove for five minutes and then we chose a spot. I don’t- I don’t remember where it was.” The man is cowering a whimpering and begging forgiveness and he’s pitiful. Tony knows that if he stays any longer, McClellan will wind up dead. He turns around and slams the door behind him. Steve can take care of the rest.

Nobody needs to say a word, they’re back on the quinjet in seconds, and back at the diner in a matter of minutes. Peter had to be buried more than twenty-four hours ago, there’s been a small rainfall and Tony would use his infrared sensors if he didn’t think the body would be too deep or chilled. 

There’s no sign of tire tracks on the hard ground, so all they can really search for is upturned earth. There are no cameras out here, nothing Tony can tap into for clues. It’s like a desert wasteland, and if Peter really does end up dying out here by himself, Tony is going to kill somebody and set the place on fire. 

They only split into two groups this time. Nobody says it, but Tony knows they want to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid again. Which is fair. The man uncovering the body by himself would probably not go over so smoothly. 

So, it’s two large groups and the coms are on at all times. F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerts everybody when she finds a signal half a mile from where Tony’s group is standing, but he’s the only one to see the feed. 

Because somebody is live streaming an image Peter’s face to some unknown server. McClellan had fully intended to watch him die. His eyes are closed, and there seem to be bugs moving back and forth over his scar marked skin and he already looks dead. 

But there are coordinates now, and they know exactly where he is. God, if the next time he sees Peter the kid is alive… It’s going to be like Christmas. Granted, a really, really awful and horrid and traumatic Christmas, but Peter will be alive and the world will be at peace again. 

When they begin digging, the dirt and sand comes up with earthworms and maggots. It’s soft and wet and three feet deep, but the ground finally makes way for a box. It’s a normal, albeit poorly made, coffin and they’re hauling it to the surface without a minute to waste.

It’s nailed down, but that’s not a problem for the Avengers. They pull it open and Tony isn’t the only one who’s ready to retch. 

It smells sour and sweet and like mold and urine and shit and rotting meat. There are maggots crawling underneath the kid's skin, flies buzz up and down, feasting on human flesh. The kid is hardly wearing any clothes and Tony can see places where beetles must have dug their way into the skin, must have laid eggs. The only sign that Peter is alive are his eyes. Closed in the video, they are now open. 

They are open and half-lidded and glassy and empty and F.R.I.D.A.Y. is having trouble reading his vital signs but continuously reminding Tony that they are there; just uneven and low. 

Peter is alive, Tony has to remind himself. The kid is alive and that’s what he wanted and that should be good enough. 

The kid is alive but Tony never considered the possibility that he could die after they found him. Peter is dangerously unstable and now they have to find a way to keep him alive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there guys, we're getting there. 
> 
> Only two more chapters,and then the story will be over. 
> 
> I can't tell you if Peter's going to be okay, or if he's going to recover. I've been doing a lot of research and there is a hell of a lot that needs to be taken care of to return Peter to any semblance of normal. Just don't put all your hopes in one place, but also don't give up just yet. It's not over. 
> 
> Love you all.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit guys, I am so, so sorry about not updating yesterday. Things honestly got so crazy. I caught a random parakeet during a block party on Sunday, and I've been trying to find the owner. The bird really likes biting the webbing between my thumb and forefinger and I have no idea what to do with it. Parakeets are not native to the DC metropolitan area, I can tell you that.  
> And then yesterday morning I, like the idiot I am, took my night pills instead of my daytime pills. I use trazedone to fall asleep, and I realize I've taken the wrong pills and freak out. Immediately, I take my morning pills as well and then on the way to school I stop at Starbucks to get a disgusting drink with four fucking shots of caffeine. By the time lunch rolls around, I'm shaking and stuttering and I've got a migraine and a stomach ache and nausea and chest pain and I honestly feel like I'm about to pass out, but I keep going. At least, until the last class of the day rolls around and I practically collapse into my desk and nearly faint. First smart thing i do all day is heading to the nurse and asking her opinion. She had to convince me not to go back to class, and then I went home. Fell asleep after maybe an hour of shaking uncontrollably in my bed, and then woke up in two hours. Couldn't sleep again, so wrapped this chapter up at 2:00 in the morning and prepared it for posting here. 
> 
> Like I said. It's been crazy

The moment Peter’s limp and unresponsive form is carried onto the Quinjet, he is taken from Tony once again. The medics are strapping him to a gurney and shouting orders and information to each other and rolling him away faster than Tony can follow.

When designing the plane, Tony had installed medibay walls that would be able to alternate between translucent and opaque. Right now, the border between two rooms is crystalline, Tony can see the needles go into the boy’s arms, can see as he’s hooked up to numerous machines. 

They should be giving the kid privacy, Tony knows that he shouldn’t be watching Peter like some sort of gross nature documentary. But he can’t look away, they’re cleaning the kid - wiping off dirt and grime and dried blood, but Peter doesn’t look any better. 

If anything, it makes the boy look worse. His skin is gray and stretched over his body like a thin, lumpy blanket. His sunken eyes and skeletal figure make him look more like a halloween costume than a real, living person. 

He’s still covered in purple and black bruises, there’s swelling in his arms where his joints should be connected but clearly aren’t. If Tony looks closely enough, he thinks he can see slight movement underneath the kid’s skin.

It’s almost easy to forget that this emaciated body, the gaunt and discolored caricature of pain, is still Peter Parker. That this horrifying image was created from a bright, cheerful, brave young man. No, Peter isn’t even a young man. He’s a boy. Peter is a child. He’s supposed to be a child and not just an empty body. 

The quinjet is one of the fastest aerial vehicles in the world. The trip to upstate New York should take no more than an hour in stormy weather and bad conditions. Today, the air is clear and the wind is perfect. 

The forty-five minutes still feels like an eternity.

“At least,” Wanda tries to reason with him, “Once we arrive the surgeons will be prepared already.”

And it’s true. There are entire teams of doctors and nurses and surgeons and physical therapists waiting at the complex, and Tony should be grateful. And, although there’s not so much that can be done just yet, the medics on the jet are some of the best around. They can analyze and explain the situation in depth. They can stabilize vital signs and begin medications. They can keep Peter alive for another fucking forty-two minutes.

Time has never stretched this immensely before. It’s been less than five minutes and it’s too much too much too much- He swallows the feelings down. He stuffs them all back into their respective places, and he knows it’s going to explode at some point, in some huge humiliatingly dramatic panic attack, but right now, the important thing is Peter. He has to be here for Peter.

‘ _ Happy would like me to remind you to reach out to May Parker about any situational changes. Peter’s current location and condition should be explained to his legal guardian, would you like me to call her for you?’  _ F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s artificial voice cuts sharply through Tony’s thoughts. How the hell could he have forgotten May? 

“Hook me up, F.R.I.D.A.Y.” Tony answers, and he’s got to move into a different room because he can’t watch Peter while he calls the boy’s aunt. He doesn’t need more tense guilt and sharp worry than he already has. 

“Tony,” May answers on the first ring, with the same words she always uses, “What’s happened?” She sounds so tired. Every time she picks up the phone her voice is softer and less hopeful. 

“We found him,” Tony says. And he really, really hopes it’s good news. He really hopes that Peter doesn’t die after all of this. 

“Oh thank God!” May’s suddenly ecstatic, Tony can hear her excitement and relief through the phone. “How is he? Is he okay? Can I speak to him?”

“No, you can’t,” It comes out cold and harsh and Tony flinches at his own voice, “I’m sorry, he’s, um… He’s hurt pretty bad. We’re taking him upstate, I’ll have someone pick you up.”

The other end of the line is silent for a good few seconds before May’s voice is back, restrained and quiet and terrified, “Tony…” She says, and he can’t explain it all to her, not right now. “What happened to him?” 

“He was tortured,” Tony says, because there really is no good answer, “I’ll tell you the rest once you’re here, okay?” May is protesting, and there really is no conceivable reason that she wouldn’t be, but Tony can’t say anymore, “I’ll see you then.”

And if the man’s voice cracks on the last word, he hangs up before May can say anything about it.

  
  


…

Tony is kept in the dark just as long as May is. He’s left to explain the situation to her, as one of the first people on the scene. He tells her what little he knows- the knees, the arms, the apparent and obvious dehydration, and all of bugs that had been crawling over Peter’s abused skin. 

May is a nervous wreck. She knows, objectively, about the severity of her nephew’s condition, but she hasn’t seen him. She arrives to the complex mere moments after Peter is rolled out for immediate surgery. And, besides the overview Tony provides, they’re left in nearly perfect silence for a good two hours. 

The entire time, May is shaking and thrumming her fingers against the armrest on her chair. Tony paces. He’s never had so many surgeons in the complex before, but he doesn’t want to take Peter to a public hospital. If Peter’s enhanced abilities are found out by the world, Tony can’t see anything good coming of it. 

A doctor appears in their private waiting room, just as dusk is beginning to set, and beckons them over. The woman is dressed in blue scrubs, and she’s obviously just come out of surgery. Her ungloved hands rub together, and her colorful surgical cap rests over her red hair. 

She looks like the type of person who greets others with a smile, but she doesn’t offer them one. Her round face remains stoic as she looks them up and down. Besides him, May is a mess. There are bags around her dark brown eyes, and Tony can swear she’s about to fall apart. He supposes that he probably doesn’t look very much better. 

“How is he?” May asks quietly. Part of Tony wishes that he could step up and comfort the poor woman. He doesn’t, it’s not a large part. He’s more worried about the kid anyway. 

“Mr. Stark,” The woman addresses him instead, “Is there somewhere we can sit? We have a lot to go over.”

So, they go to one of the many conference rooms. While Tony seats himself, and May takes out a pen and a notepad, the doctor is pulling up Peter’s file on one of the many 3D interfaces. 

“As I’m sure you’re both aware, Peter Parker was found about three hours ago, after a six day absence. He’s sustained multiple severe crural and brachial injuries- that is, to the arms and legs. He is severely dehydrated and malnourished, and will require extensive surgery. That being said, Mrs. Parker, as his legal guardian it is up to you to decide whether Mr. Stark is permitted to sit in or not.” 

And oh fuck, she’s going to let May kick him out. He’s going to have to hack into his own system to find Peter’s files and learn about the boy’s condition. Which he really would prefer not to do by himself. He’s about to argue when the doctor shoots him a sharp look. 

“This may be a private space, Mr. Stark, but Peter is my patient and I’m responsible for his confidential medical information,” She says. Tony knows about doctor patient confidentiality, knows that he should be glad that the doctor adheres to a code, but he can’t let the women separate him from Peter’s care. Not now. Not after everything. 

“He can stay,” May says quickly. It’s the strongest her voice has sounded all day, “Please, let him stay.” 

The doctor nods, but she still addresses May when she speaks,  “Alright then. My name is Moira Griffin, and I’m Peter’s general surgeon. That means I’ll be overseeing many of his operations and I’ll be in charge of his team. There are a lot of people looking after him, and we’re going to do everything we can to keep him alive and stable.

“To put it lightly… You’re nephew has seen a lot of trauma. He had multiple dislocations in his arms and shoulders, nearly all of the ligaments in his knees have been torn, and his kneecaps have, for all intents and purposes, been thoroughly destroyed. His legs seem like some of the initial injuries, and, to be honest, it’s a miracle that gangrene hasn’t taken them yet. Any normal person would have suffered impossible pressure buildup and severe infection. The wounds untaken care of, as Peter’s have been, should have killed him.”

She pulls up a few images, and Tony stares at the x-ray of what might have once been a knee. There are bits of shattered bone throughout the picture, and shit, Tony’s mind goes to engineering. When machine parts break that bad, he just throws them out. 

“It didn’t kill him, though, and I think we should all take that as a good thing. The exact extent of his superhuman abilities is unknown, but we do have on record that Peter has an extremely fast metabolism and healing rate. His healing factor seems to have slowed down, probably due to lack of energy and the sheer amount of trauma. On the other hand, his body seems to have focused on fighting infection, and that’s really great. His blood is actually surprisingly clear for the most part.

“That said, there were traces in his blood of a drug called Hyoscyamine. Usually, it’s a prescription medication to relieve stomach cramps and pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome. It’s usually taken in pill form, but judging by the sheer concentration in his blood, we think it must have been injected. Overdose isn’t fatal, but it can still have some nasty effects.” She pulls up a document, Tony can see a long list of hyoscyamine side-effects.

“I’m going to pass this on to you at some point today, but the drug is mostly out of his system. However, moving on to the dehydration and malnutrition; Peter lost almost fourteen percent of his total body fluids. Fifteen percent almost always results in death, I’m so glad you got him to medical personnel when you did. As for the malnutrition… Peter hasn’t eaten in what we can only assume is the past six days. Although his metabolism is still faster than the average man’s, it did slow down a great deal after about seventy-two hours. Most of his energy is still going into recovery, and that means he’s already consumed any of his fat reserves. His body began breaking down muscle to feed itself, and physical therapy is suggested to help him regain strength in his arms, and maybe even his legs.

“Honestly, I would have wanted to begin repairs on his knees today, but I don’t think he’s strong enough for two surgeries yet and we needed to prioritize the myiasis…”

Tony can feel the tension while the doctor hesitates, and suddenly he can feel his heart beating in his throat. She had been so nonchalantly going through numerous different awful conditions, without even blinking. Tony doesn’t know what it means, but he almost feels like he doesn’t want to find out. 

Still, he has to ask, “What is that? What does myiasis mean?”

The surgeon, Dr. Griffin, bites her lip, “There really is no gentle way to explain this one, I’m sorry. Myiasis refers to the infestation of fly larvae to a human host. During his time underground, he seems to have attracted a few species, so-”

“There are maggots inside of Peter!?” May interrupts, voice nearly a shout. Tony can… he can understand that. Maggots eat dead things, they eat rotting things. The thought of the disgusting worm like creatures burrowing in Peter’s skin- into the still living body of a young boy who never did anything to hurt anybody and was yet feeling more pain than any one person should ever have to experience- it makes Tony want to throw up. 

May is hyperventilating, and Tony wants to help, he really does, but he’s stuck staring at the edge of the table, attempting to keep the morning’s breakfast from coming back up. He needs her to calm down, shit, he needs to calm down. The surgeon is speaking again, and Tony almost doesn’t listen, but-

“Not anymore!” She says, and May still isn’t breathing quite right but at least it’s a little slower, “He did have myiasis, that’s what we operated on. He doesn’t have it anymore, we got them all out, I promise.”

Peter’s aunt is calming down, and Tony can tell, visually, how hard she’s trying. Her hands are curled into fists around the crumpled pad of paper she had once planned to write notes on. Her eyes are closed tight, and her mouth is nearly a straight line. May looks like she’s done, like she can’t take anymore, and as much as he hates it, Tony’s about to suggest that they take a break, maybe pick up again in a few hours.

May speaks first, and it’s the complete opposite from her last words. Maybe not in meaning, but she had last spoken loud and frantic and now she sounds so quiet and strained and, “Please, continue.” Tony doesn’t think he’s ever met somebody so simply strong. He doesn’t have time to marvel, because Griffin is taking her cue and speaking again.

“It involved a lot of very small incisions and very carefully pulling the parasites out. They’re usually quite easy to spot, since they still need to breathe, and they usually stay very close to the surface of the skin. Again, we are immensely fortunate that no lasting damage was done to his genital region or to his eyes and ears. There were a few there, but only a few, and they seemed to have only arrived recently.” Doctor Griffin ends it there, and Tony can feel the tension releasing from his shoulders when he realizes it’s over. 

It’s a lot, but that’s everything notably wrong with Peter right now. It isn’t an endless list. All of these conditions sound awful, no argument there, but it’s limited. And none of them seem completely impossible to recover from. The knees are going to be the worst, he knows, but he can figure something out. There’s got to be some way they can replace the kneecap, and Tony will make sure Peter walks again. He’ll do everything he can to ensure Peter’s life returns to normal and he can just be an average kid for once. 

“That’s everything?” May asks, and Tony can hear his own thoughts echoed in her voice. It’s beyond overwhelming, and it’s a hell of a lot to take in, but it’s a start. They know everything that’s wrong now, and they can build from there.

It takes about ten seconds for the surgeon to shatter that. 

“No, it’s not,” She says, and they meet her eyes for what’s probably the first time during the meeting, “Because of everything: The dehydration, the low blood sugar and sodium, the simple amount of stress and trauma to his mind and body, the possible migratory myiasis, the shock, the starvation, the blood loss… Peter is in a comatose state, and we’re not yet completely sure what’s causing it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have no idea how much i love the medical shit. If any of you guys want any more information on Peter's condition, or if you want some medical advice for your own stuff, you know how to reach me. Hell, please reach out to me either way, you know i love it when you do. 
> 
> Anyhow, I currently have about four hours until i wake up for school and post this chapter. It's kind of like I'm writing you all from the past. Basically, i know I won't be able to sleep without my meds but i also feel like death so I'll be seeing you real soon.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't begin to tell you guys what this means to me. I hadn't written narrative in about a year before I discovered SM:H. So much time has gone into this, so much effort, and love, and... I can't even put it all into words. It's overwhelming and it's amazing and I am so, so grateful to everybody that's been here for me. 
> 
> That said, I do have to apologize. Some of you were worried about me not posting for a while, but I'm okay. It really is my own fault. After writing this, after experiencing this, I really didn't want it to end. I wrote a little bit every day, but I admit that I put it off as well. I'm never going to be able to write this particular story again, and I loved every minute of typos and rewrites. 
> 
> I may not be the most talented author out there, but I try my best. And you guys make me feel that it's good enough. The feeling of being good enough is honestly amazing. This is definitely the most widely read thing I've written, and I'm hopeful that people enjoy consuming it as much as I enjoyed producing it. I hope you feel as much, and learn as much, and see as much, and dream as much. 
> 
> This is long, and this is unedited. I realized that there are a lot more loose ends to tie together than I originally thought, and they're not all taken care of here. And I know if I try to edit this right now, it'll probably never come up. This focuses on Peter's recovery, and is from Tony's point of view. He acts harsh for a lot of it, but that's just the way Tony Stark is in my mind. He's fiercly protective, and emotional, and sometimes it just comes out in the wrong ways. He's still a good guy, but even good people have faults.

 

“I haven’t seem him sleep in the past few months. I mean, really sleep. He’s always awake when I get home, he’s awake when I get up. He takes naps, sometimes, but they’re superficial. He’s moving around again the moment there’s any sound in the room, he doesn’t sleep like this, not ever,” May’s voice is the softest Tony has ever heard it, as soft as her hands are, wrapped around Peter’s.

“It’s not right,” Tony agrees. There’s a state of the art air filtration system and personal heat sensors with cooling. The room is large, and painted in warm colors, and comfortable, Tony knows this. He also knows that it’s too hot, and too small, and stifling. But he can’t get up, and he can’t leave. It’s as if any moment could break this precarious balancing act they’ve found themselves in.

Peter is alive, and his heart is beating by itself, but there’s also a tube sneaking past his chapped lips. There are multiple needles taped to his arms, IV bags of clear liquids delivering fluids, and glucose, and medication to the broken body. 

Peter still looks so thin, so young. There are small bandages covering the sites of maggot extraction, the sores around the poor boy’s wrists are layered with gauze, almost up to his fingertips. His legs are laid straight out, the knees supported on both sides by foam blocks and covered by a clear plastic wrap. The boy is thoroughly secured, tied down into his hospital bed. Tony’s eyes are drawn once more to Peter’s bandaged wrists. He wonders just how much time the kid spent restrained. 

“There are different levels of coma,” One of Peter’s doctors tells them when they first walk into the hospital room, “On the Glasgow scale, three points out of fifteen is commonly accepted as brain death, and Peter’s a solid nine. He’s opening his eyes in response to voices, withdrawing at the sensation of pain, and he’s been occasionally verbal.” The doctor smiles, and for the first time in a week, it feels as though they just  _ might _ have a reason to smile back. Before Tony or May can ask, the doctor confirms that “We’re very optimistic that he’ll be waking up soon. I’d give it three days to a week until he’s fully conscious again.”

They’re left with the knowledge that Peter will come back to them. They’re left wondering just how much of him will be left to come back. While the boy’s prognosis is not the worst it could be, they don’t know just how much damage has been done to the brain. 

Tony would pray for Peter, if he were the type of person to pray. But he’s not, so he just wishes, wishes that against all odds Peter can come back to them whole, wishes that the universe could give the boy just one mercy. 

However much he wants to, Tony cannot stay by Peter’s side forever. He’s a busy man, he has grants to give and papers to sign, and even he is too respectful to go through paperwork in front of a comatose kid’s sickbed. 

So he goes to work, and he tries his fucking hardest not to think of a dying boy in a coffin with every stroke of the pen. If only it were so easy. Tony makes it through about three things before Pepper is practically commanding him to stop. 

“You haven’t slept in a week,” Pepper tells him.

“Yes I have,” He argues back.

“Tony, power naps don’t count. You can’t survive on caffeine alone.”

“They do, and I can.”

“Tony…”

“Christ, Pepper, stop acting like my mother. I don’t need your help, I need you to leave me alone!” The moment Tony yells at his fiance, he regrets it. She’s good at pretending it doesn’t get to her, but he knows when she’s hurt. 

“Fine,” She says, “Go work yourself until you drop, I’m sure that the boy and his aunt will appreciate it when you can’t do shit anymore.” And she storms off, slamming the door behind her. 

Tony wants to call after her, he wants to apologize and tell her that she’s right and leave it like that. Of course he doesn’t. 

Instead, he wipes the files clean from his desk. He brings up Peter’s x-rays, with an assortment of images showing the anatomy of a healthy knee. He picks up a pen, sets up a blank blueprint, and gets to work.

  
  


...

“Mr. Stark, it’s a great idea, really, but I don’t know how it could work,” Doctor Moira Griffin tells him, when Tony shows her his design. He’s been working on it for the past sixteen hours, testing prototypes and figuring out schematics. Hell, he’s even spoken to Bucky Barnes. Bucky fucking Barnes. The man who brutally murdered his parents, the man who drove him and Steve apart with no care for the greater good.

The man who also removed his own arm and handed it to Tony, vulnerably sitting and answering all the questions and explaining his control over the mechanical limb. 

Bucky Barnes, who offered his assistance to a man he knows hates him for the sake of a boy that fought him and won. 

Tony doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, but he has to respect the other man. 

After all, it is partially thanks to Bucky that Tony’s going to be able to recreate Peter’s knees. That is, if he can get the surgeon to agree. 

“I figured it all out,” Tony tells the doctor, “These are the blueprints, you have all the supplies. I know how it works, and I know that it works. That’s enough.” He hands her papers: files, and blueprints, and measurements, and calculations. She doesn’t take them. 

“Mr. Stark, we’re surgeons, not engineers.” And Tony can hear the distaste in her voice. She doesn’t seem to understand how much of Peter’s livelihood depends on his mobility. He lives in Queens for fuck’s sake. Elevators are out of service more than not, and nobody can get anywhere in the city without walking a generous amount. 

“I’m an engineer,” Tony responds automatically. 

“No, you’re a conflict of interest,” She shakes her head, “There’s no way you would go into the operating room with us.”

“Then I’ll communicate with you in another way. This is a state of the art facility, we do have video calls.”

“You don’t understand!” She says, “We may still be able to save some motion in his legs, his ankles, his feet. Robotic bone, ligament, tendons, that’s never been done before. Much less between two vital pieces of live tissue.” She rubs a hand over her face, and suddenly she looks tired. He’s forgotten how much work she has. The woman has been placed in charge of a severely injured kid, and she’s trying to handle all of it. 

“It’s not been done before, and it’s not approved by any medical board. What you’re suggesting I do is unauthorized human experimentation. And if it doesn’t work? If it cuts off the blood flow, and it probably will, we would have to amputate. The poor child’s been through enough.”

“He won’t want them to be there if he can’t use them. Everything’s figured out, and it will work. I’m not going to sit by if I can save a fifteen year old kid from a life of constant agony. I know he’ll be able to walk again, he’ll be able to run. Hell, if he wants he can do cartwheels, whatever other shit he thinks of. Just look through the file, give him a chance.”

She purses her lips and Tony can tell that she’s conflicted. She wants to do what’s best for Peter, they all do. They just have different ideas about what exactly that means. She opens the manilla folder, reads through a couple pages, and sighs. 

“Mr. Stark,” She says, pinching the top of her nose, “You are not Peter’s father. You have no jurisdiction over his treatment whatsoever. If Ms. Parker agrees, then I’ll operate. Otherwise we’re taking a more traditional approach. There’s nothing I can do without the guardian’s consent.” And she almost sounds apologetic. 

“Get some sleep,” Tony says, offering a minute smile, “You’re going to be performing a big procedure.”

  
  


....

Tony doesn’t try to be an asshole, really. He just kind of is, and as much as people like to tell him, he already knows this about himself. He doesn’t actively attempt to be a jerk, but he doesn’t actively attempt to filter himself either. 

If Tony Stark wants to say something, he says it, consequences be damned. Sometimes he’ll look back on the things he says and he regrets it. Like when he took away Peter’s suit, or the many times he’s yelled at Pepper until she can’t stand him anymore. 

He doesn’t want to regret anything he says to May Parker. And it’s not only because she’s Peter’s single remaining family member. It’s because he understands what she feels. It’s because he feels it too. 

“May,” He nudges her shoulder, feeling a little bit bad for waking her up. “I know how to fix Peter’s legs,” He tells her, relishing the small hopeful smile that quirks her lips.

“How’s that?” She asks, and he shows her the plans. He tells her the benefits, the alternatives, the risks, and she listens attentively to all of it. She’s very focused, and it makes Tony wonder how she raised a kid like Peter.

“Griffin’s doubtful,” Tony admits, eyes fixated on the boy’s plastic wrapped knees.

“You said he could lose his legs,” May whispers. Her top lip is folded into her mouth as she gnaws on it.

“The surgeon thinks it’s a possibility,” Tony says, “But if we don’t do it then he’ll never regain full function of his legs anyways. If this works, Peter’s movement could be good as new.”

“So that’s the exchange: The possibility of him physically losing his legs for the possibility of a full recovery.”

He wants to say something to defend his invention, but he has to leave the decision to May. He shouldn’t be trying to influence her. “That’s right,” He says.

May sighs, runs a hand through her long hair, “I don’t trust you,” She tells him, and Tony has no idea what to say to that. 

“I know that you care for Peter,” She says, “But you took my fifteen year old nephew into a war zone. You let a war criminal have at him without any protection. You gave him spandex and weapons, and you encouraged him to put himself in danger on a daily basis. You helped him hide important things from me, and drove him away from me for months.”

And damn, she’s right. Tony’s a fucking idiot, he hadn’t ever thought or cared about the kid’s relationship with his aunt. Really, he hadn’t thought to give May Parker the time of day when he wasn’t making offhand comments about her smoking hot body. She’s not going to approve the procedure, and Peter’s going to spend the rest of his life miserable. All because he couldn’t give a damn about anybody besides himself.

“I’m going to let you do this, Stark. You better not mess it up.” 

  
  


…

For all of the surgeries Tony has been in, he’s never seen a serious one performed- at least, not in real life. 

The man has never been woozy at the sight of blood, he’s seen his fair share of trauma, but there’s so much. He’s watching two small groups of surgeons picking shattered bones and ripped cartilage out of Peter’s legs. They have to cut open the entire knee, and they need to dig around until they find everything they need to remove. It’s a lot.

Tony is reminded of High School anatomy class while the doctors systematically dissect the kid’s patellar and popliteal regions. They take out his knee caps, sever partially or completely destroyed tendons, and stitch his muscles back together. 

Then, it’s time for Tony to move in. He has to install the mechanics quickly. There’s an amazingly limited pathway between the thighs and the calf, and Tony realizes that it’s kind of a miracle the kid’s still getting blood to his extremities. Somehow, the doctor has made it possible. Griffin watches him like a hawk while he’s putting together the machines.

It doesn’t take very long, but it feels like hours and Tony’s hands are nearly shaking by the time he’s done. He takes a step back, and looks away. He’s been staring into the bloody cavities that were once knees for long enough. 

He tries not to pay too much attention while the doctors attach the boy’s nerves to the piece of machinery. It’s going to hurt when he wakes up, no doubt about it. Before they close up, they put some sort of tubing into the kid’s legs. A thin and a thick white tube go through each of the knees. When they graft the skin back on, they pull the thinner tube through the skin, and stitch it so that it’s halfway in. 

“This one’s to assist blood flow,” Griffin says, referring to the tube still buried under Peter’s skin, “And the other one is a drain, to avoid compartment syndrome,” She nods, “You should go now, there’s nothing more that you can do.”

So, Tony leaves. He throws out the scrubs, and washes his hands, and decides that he never wants to observe or contribute to a surgery again. 

May is there waiting for him, and he can’t help the tired smile. Finally, he can give the woman some good news.

 

...

The next day, one of the doctors says that they expect Peter to wake up in the next three to twenty-four hours. Tony sits with the kid all morning, and then he leaves. May’s face should be the first Peter sees.

So he goes and he does his work, and he’s waiting for F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s notification that Peter is conscious and smiling and speaking again. So far, the operation looks like a success. There is fluid buildup, but it’s all taken care of by the drains. The calves show no sign of deterioration or of rejecting the metal bits. 

Tony finds himself chatting with the other Avengers. He’s forgotten that they were even here until he needed to use Bucky’s arm, and he thinks he should be spending time with somebody. He hasn’t gotten around to apologizing to Pepper yet, but he knows he will. As soon as he’s able to speak with Peter, the tension will leave his shoulders and he’ll finally be able to relax, knowing that the kid will be fine. 

Scott is going on about something completely unimportant. There seems to be no point to the tangent, and many of the words mean almost nothing. Somehow, it’s not that bad. The constant noise reminds him of Peter, of how, once Peter is awake, Tony will hear the kid’s voice whether he wants to or not. 

He doesn’t remember the moment between resting his eyes and falling asleep, but he wakes to Wanda nudging his shoulder. 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y. just told us that the child is awake,” She says.

Tony doesn’t bother to thank her, instead addressing the A.I. directly, “Great, F.R.I.D.A.Y., give me an update.” He’s already stood up, and is trying not to seem too excited or nervous about the entire thing.

“ _ Peter Parker came into a state of full awareness five minutes ago. The effects of trauma on his mind are thus far unclear, although his mental and emotional conditions seem unwell. May Parker is currently requesting your presence, Sir. Shall I tell her that you’ll be there in a few minutes?” _

“Yes.” Tony is already through the door. He doesn’t excuse himself or waste time on goodbyes. They get the jist. They know that Peter is awake and that Tony has to be there now.

The elevator is, of course, faster than a good many cars, but the seconds it takes for him to arrive to his destination feels like so much longer. Why would May want him there? A million scenarios run through his head. He wonders if Peter is somehow deteriorating, if he’s having a fit, if he’s babbling nonsense and he doesn’t remember a thing, or if maybe, the kid had simply been asking for him. 

When he enters the room, it almost looks as if nothing has changed. The heart rate is elevated, and May looks more nervous, but Peter is laying right where he was. His arms are to his sides, his legs straight forward, his chin pointed towards the ceiling. As Tony approaches, the boy’s eyes flash to him for a second, before looking away again. 

“Hey Tiger, how are you feeling?” He stands next to Peter’s bed and ruffles the boy’s hair. Besides a flinch, there’s nothing. It’s almost like Peter doesn’t register that they’re there. 

“He won’t respond to anything I say,” May tells him. Her eyes don’t leave her nephew’s blank stare, and neither do Tony’s. 

Tony turns around, but before he can call for Griffin, there’s a young woman in the doorway. She shakes both of their hands.

“Doctor Cecilia Reyes,” She introduces herself, “I’m the trauma specialist assigned to Peter’s case.”

Tony wants to ask why he hasn’t seen her before, wants to know what’s wrong with his kid, but May speaks before he even has a chance.

“Why won’t he respond to me?” May asks, and Tony can hear the quiver in her voice. As if the ordeal by itself hadn’t been enough, Peter might still be lost. They’d dreaded it, but knew the possibilities from the beginning. 

“It’s normal,” Reyes says first, meeting May’s eyes, “Peter’s been through a lot of ongoing trauma, his mind couldn’t handle the pain or the stress, so pieces of his limbic system became incapacitated. That’s mostly his ability to form thoughts and feelings based on outside factors.

“Basically, at some point or another Peter decided that he had enough. He must have been in a great deal of pain. There’s no way to sugar coat that, and I’m sorry. When there was no other option left, Peter stopped feeling. On the plus side, it means that by the end he probably wasn’t suffering as much. For the worst of it, he could have been completely disassociated.”

“So the bugs,” May asks, “The claustrophobia, he didn’t feel any of that?”

“No,” Reyes smiles softly, “He was afforded that mercy, at least.”

“When is he going to wake up?” Tony asks, because this is nearly the same as the coma. Peter is unaware, they just have to wait for him again.

“He’s awake,” Reyes says, “He’s aware. He knows that you’re here and he knows that we’re all talking right now. He may even understand every word. The only difference here is that his mind can’t formulate a response right now.”

“Okay, fine,” Tony knows he sounds harsh now, but this woman has no right. She’s avoided his question completely. She knows what he meant. He cares more about Peter returning to them than he does about the kid’s analytical abilities. Of course, he knows that Peter is near genius, he’s eager to learn and excited for challenges. He hopes that Peter’s life returns to normal, but first he just wants Peter. 

Reyes sighs, runs a hand through her dreadlocked hair.

“There’s no way to tell,” She says, “It could take the brain months or years to reboot. Most of the time, it never happens. People don’t come back from trauma like this, not easily. His survival in and of itself is a miracle. We’ve treated his physical injuries, and he’s going to live. This isn’t what you want to hear, but the rest is up to Peter. It’s up to how much of himself he allowed to slip away and how hard he’s willing to fight to get it back. I’m sorry.”

Undeniably, it’s a hit. It’s a bump in the road. But Peter is a four wheel drive. In the end, it’s kind of the best case scenario. Nobody fights harder than Peter, and nobody is so purely themselves. If it’s up to Peter, they both know that the boy will come back. 

And until he does, they’ll be by his side. They’ll take care of him and watch over him for as long as it takes. They’ll converse with him until he can speak back. They’ll wait for him, and he’ll come back for them. Because it’s Peter. Because he has to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think guys? One more?

**Author's Note:**

> You all know comments give me life :)
> 
> Repti-fandom-person.tumblr.com


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